Within this context, Faraday Technology Inc. and the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) are working on developing a technology to eliminate many of the contaminants that commonly foul the RO system and produce a more durable closed loop wastewater treatment and water recovery system as demonstrated in Figure 1[3],[4]. At Faraday Technology Inc., we develop a custom bench-scale ammonia electrolyzer with Pt coated electrodes fabricated by the FARADAYIC®[5] Process. The developed catalysts and electrolyzer are used to evaluate ammonia oxidation for wastewater treatment as following reactions:
The influent ammonia from waste water can be oxidized in an electrolyzer according to the reaction:
2NH3 + 6OH- → N2 + 6H2O + 6e- (1)
while water is simultaneously reduced according to the following reaction:
6H2O + 6e- → 3H2 + 6OH- (2)
The developed technology has the potential to be compatible with existing ECLSS systems and be an integral part of the closed loop living systems required for long term life support on NASA’s manned space missions.
Acknowledgements: The financial support of NASA Contract No. NNX17CA30P is acknowledged.
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[5] FARADAYIC® is a registered service mark (Reg. No. 3,423,999 5/6/2008) of Faraday Technology.