Excremental Experiment.

Chapter sixty three as humans in space try to get away from complex manufacturing of rocket fuel. Example dilithium crystals. To rocket fuel of the future could be made from excrement or simply known as human waste. as space cruiser stipulates that algae might be catalyst in this whole process.
It's not just a whole load of old stool, more at the request of NASA, researchers based at the University of Florida have devised a means of converting human waste into rocket fuel. So could the star-ships of the future take recycling to extremes? A more likely scenario is that the newly discovered process, like so many space program spin-offs, will end up being used in applications back here on Earth. Until now, the inevitable end results - at least in a physiological sense - of human endeavor in space has been collected on board spacecraft then burnt up on re-entry. But applying the same science of the newly discovered process could mean that conversion of human waste takes place in a number of locations according to Pratap Pullammanappallil, a University of Florida (UF) associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering. As this stuff maybe used on campus or around town, or anywhere, to convert waste into fuel," Pullammanappallil commented.The scheme has its roots in 2006 when NASA began forward planning to eventually build an inhabited facility on the moon sometime between 2019 and 2024 as part of the now amended plans for establishing a lunar outpost under the George W. Bush era "Vision for Space Exploration "declaration. Having set NASA's goal of making a lunar return, the space agency wanted to reduce the weight of spacecraft leaving Earth. Until now, waste generated by astronauts during spaceflight was dead weight, having to be carried by the mission until it could be gotten rid of on re-entry.

To carry this useless weight around meant in turn having to carry more rocket fuel around than would otherwise be the case. NASA's current practice is to store the waste in containers that are subsequently loaded onto space cargo vehicles that burn up as they re-entered Earth's atmosphere.Scientists work out how to turn human waste into rocket fuel.
That may be fine for missions to near Earth orbit. But for a long-term mission to the moon, possibly one that involved regular changes of moon-base crews much like the International Space Station, it's impractical to run what would amount to the equivalent of sewage barges back to Earth. The costs of such shittle missions, sorry, shuttle missions would increase excrementally, so to speak. Having no wish to see the moon turned into a dumping ground - there's quite enough of these here on Earth - NASA's already ruled out leaving the human waste on the moon's surface. That being so, the agency entered into an agreement with UF to develop test ideas. Pullammanappallil and colleague Abhishek Dhoble, who was then a graduate student, were up for the challenge.As Pullammanappallil explained,
Scientists were trying to find out how much methane can be produced from uneaten food, food packaging and human waste. "The idea was to see whether we could make enough fuel to launch rockets and not carry all the fuel and its weight from Earth for the return journey. Methane can be used to fuel the rockets. Enough methane can be produced to come back from the moon. "At the outset, NASA supplied UF researchers with a packaged form of chemically produced human waste that also incorporated everything associated with the entire bathroom experience - simulated food waste, towels, wash cloths, clothing and packaging materials. Pullammanappallil and Dhoble, who is now a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, ran laboratory tests to ascertain how much methane could be produced from the waste and as well as the gas' rate of production. The researchers measured methane production at 290 liters (76.6 US gallons) of methane per crew per day. By way of comparison, a typical car running on liquid petroleum gas - LPG consists of propane or butane, both a couple of steps up the hydrocarbon chain of compounds from methane - might get around 20 to 25 miles per gallon. Putting that in context, if a spacecraft were a family car it could run for roughly 1,723 miles on fuel derived from one week of a lunar crew's waste.

Granted, that's still some way short of the 240,000 miles or so that separates the Earth from the moon. But it must be remembered that unlike family cars that tend to stop abruptly when the engine is switched off, spacecraft do not fire their engines all the time but will keep moving at a constant speed. All they need is engine burn sufficient to get them up to the required speed to leave the moon's orbit and head back to Earth. As spacecraft operate in a vacuum, they're subject to Newton's first law of motion which states:

"When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force ".A little methane, therefore, could let a spacecraft go a very long way.To convert this putrefying morass to methane, the scientists developed an anaerobic digester process. That's to say a process that did not require free oxygen for it to work in both killing pathogens from human waste and producing biogas - a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide - by breaking down organic matter in waste. In Earth-bound applications, that fuel could be used for heating, electricity generation or transportation. As a by-product, the digestion process would also produce around 200 gallons of water annually from the waste. This water by-product would not be fit to drink, but on the Moon, almost certainly bereft of water in any form that's easily accessible, 200 gallons, even of non-potable water would be a very precious commodity indeed. Not only that, it would be 200 gallons less of H2O that would otherwise require to take up valuable cargo space on spaceships lunar-bound from Earth.To complete the symmetry of the whole process, the water by-product, can be electrolyzed to split it into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen. Lunar astronauts could breathe the oxygen, if necessary, as a back-up to normal supplies. Any carbon dioxide and hydrogen then exhaled could then be converted to methane and / or water as part of the process.