| dc.description.abstract | Extended missions to space have long been a goal of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA). Accomplishment of NASA's goal requires the
development of systems and tools for sustaining human life for periods of several months
to several years. This is the primary objective of NASA's Advanced Life Support (ALS)
program. This work contributes directly to NASA efforts for ALS, particularly food
production. The objective of this work is to develop a systematic methodology for
analyzing and improving or modifying ALS technologies to increase their acceptability
for implementation in long-duration space missions. By focusing primarily on the food
production systems, it is an aim of this work to refine the procedure for developing and
analyzing the ALS technologies. As a result of these efforts, researchers will have at
their disposal, a powerful tool for establishing protocols for each technology as well as
for modifying each technology to meet the standards for practical applications. To
automate the developed methodology and associated calculations, a computer-aided tool
has been developed. The following systematic procedures are interrelated and
automatically integrated into the computer-aided tool:
• Process configuration, with particular emphasis given to food production (e.g.,
syrup and flour from sweet potato, starch from sweet potato, breakfast cereal from
sweet potato);
• Modeling and analysis for mass and energy tracking and budgeting;
• Mass and energy integration
• Metrics evaluation (e.g., Equivalent System Mass (ESM)). Modeling and analysis is achieved by developing material- and energy-budgeting models.
Various forms of mass and energy are tracked through fundamental as well as semiempirical
models. Various system alternatives are synthesized and screened using ESM
and other metrics. The results of mass, energy and ESM analyses collectively revealed
the major consumers of time, equivalent mass, and energy, namely evaporation,
condensation, dehydration, drying and extrusion. The targeted processes were
subsequently targeted for modifications. In conclusion, this work provides a systematic
methodology for transforming non-conventional problems into traditional engineering
design problems, a significant contribution to ALS studies. | en |
