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water recovery systems fuel cells and

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other equipment on the international

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space station use packed bed reactors

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but currently none are designed to

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handle both liquid and gas at the same

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time

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with the improved understanding of how a

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packed bed two phase flow works in

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microgravity scientists could design

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more efficient lightweight thermal

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management and life support systems that

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use less energy benefiting the space

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station and future mars missions

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this new packed bed reactor experiment

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is scheduled to launch to the station

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tomorrow evening on the orbital 4

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resupply mission iss commentator lori

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meigs recently visited nasa's glenn

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research center to get an up-close look

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at this packed bed reactor prior to

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i'm here at zen technologies and joining

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me now is brian model he is the

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principal investigator from nasa glenn

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for the packed bed reactor experiment

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brian

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this is quite a contraption we see

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behind us here what is that that's all

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for science yes this is the uh

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engineering unit for the pack bed

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reactor and you can see the the reactor

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column right in the middle there right

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now it's filled with teflon beads which

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is one of the packings that we're going

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to be testing so for folks who don't

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know what is a packed bed reactor okay

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pacquiao reactor is actually one of the

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most common reactors used in industry

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today about 80 percent of the reactors

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use this type of a setup and essentially

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it's nothing more than packing that is

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fixed in a column and then you depending

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on reaction you have your gas or liquid

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or multiple liquid phases flowing

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through it the goal is to have intimate

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contact between the phases and the solid

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the solid could be

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consumed in a reaction or it could be a

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catalyst material or something like that

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so can you relate that to folks on earth

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how this relates so this is we primarily

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use

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these types of reactors in the life

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support systems on the space station uh

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both water reclamation and air

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reclamation

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so why do we need this new study okay

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most of the systems

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flying today are single phase and they

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would like to go to two phase um some of

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them even though they start out single

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phase like a liquid for instance you'll

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get bubbles trapped in the system and

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and they like to stick in the bed and we

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need a way to remove them from the bed

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because over time as the bubbles

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accumulate

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you lose that volume of the bed so the

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efficiency of the reactor goes down

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have we done anything like this before

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we have not on the space station we've

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flown this reactor uh we've done about

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450

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test points on the aircraft and we've

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done a little bit of drop tower

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experiments but this will be the first

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time in the station and what will we

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learn from this

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uh we'll learn the key things we want to

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learn are how to remove the bubbles

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uh what pressure drops we'd expect under

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float certain flow conditions

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and what kind of flow regime we'll

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experience like will it be bubbly flow

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or pulsating flow so what is it that you

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want depending on the reaction

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i would want one or the other so

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pulsating flow typically on earth has

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too much too high a shear rate but we

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can actually operate in that flow regime

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in microgravity at a much lower shear

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rate and

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actually under certain conditions we can

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get a better efficiency in microgravity

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than we could with the same bed on earth

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and is this something that is

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timely like you have to do it at a

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certain point or will this be on the

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station for a while

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uh we're going to operate this within

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about a 10 week window

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all right well thank you for showing it