Low Maintenance Lunar Dust Filtration

Creare proposes an Autonomous Habitat Filtration System (AHFS) that uses an electrostatic precipitator and autonomous regeneration system to effectively remove dust from habitable environments in long duration space missions. Currently, HEPA style filters are a bulky consumable that have a large pressure drop across the filter that increases from particle loading. Crewed lunar missions will generate a lot of dust from EVAs and need to be low maintenance. The AHFS has low pressure drop resulting in a low power draw from a blower. The system is highly efficient in collecting all particles of interest including ultrafine, fine, and coarse. In Phase I, we successfully demonstrated the performance of the AHFS breadboard unit with measured collection efficiencies of gt;99.97% for all particles. Our system also demonstrated regeneration by collecting and then depositing lunar simulant dust in a bin. In Phase II, we will build a fully automated AHFS and measure its performance under conditions that simulate habitable environments using simulated lunar dust.