Safe & Sustainable Drinking Water on Earth
The Danish company Aquaporin A/S is active in the household water filtration market. Its mission: ensure that consumers have access to safe and reliable drinking water. The company developed the Biomimetic Aquaporin Inside™ membrane using nanotechnology and proteins capable of separating and purifying water from all other compounds. Aquaporins, also called water channels, are nature’s own water filter and facilitate rapid, highly selective water transport in nature.
The Biomimetic Aquaporin Inside™ membranes produce 20 to 50% more water flux over a typical water purification system. Aquaporin proteins used in the membranes enable up to 80 % rejection of nitrate and sulfate. The company was granted substantial European financial support via the EU AMBROSIA (Aquaporin-Inside™ Membranes for Brackish water Reverse Osmosis Application) project for development and commercialisation of the purifier. This unique technology will reduce consumers’ water bills and reduce stress on water resources. It will contribute to answer the growing demand for fresh water, including desalination, linked to climate change in a context of world growing population.
Nature’s solution for purifying water in space
Providing enough drinking water for astronauts in space is far from being easy: water is heavy and sending it to the Space Station is costly. Humans on Earth consume as much as 50 litres of water each day, but in space that figure drops dramatically. Usually an astronaut in space uses around 3 litres of water per day altogether for drinking, hygiene and cleaning.
Cargo vessels supply about 6000 to 9000 litres of water yearly. Launching a kilogram of supply from ground to Earth in orbit is fairly expensive, thus any considerable amount of water which can be reused with a simplified and reliable system will provide a direct significant cost saving in human exploration.
With this in mind, the Danish company Aquaporin Space Alliance ApS, a joint venture of Aquaporin A/S and the Danish Aerospace Company ApS, is combining expertise in water filtration and space technology to create a better solution for water recycling and filtration in humankind’s exploration of space.
This objective requires experiments in space, where several types of water such as condensate from the humidity in the cabin, urine from astronauts, wastewater from toilet and cleaning processes can be recycled and reused.
A first experiment took place on the International Space Station in September 2015 to test Aquaporin Inside™ membranes. A second experiment with improved membranes followed in October 2016 to test the ability to purify water in the Station’s microgravity environment.
Promising applications for deep space exploration
Aquaporin Space Alliance ApS (ASA) develops for ESA a breadboard model of a water recycling unit specifically dedicated to space applications. When ready, this unit will be tested on the Space Station and could be used for further human exploration of the Solar System, starting with a cis-lunar Gateway, currently in preparation with the ISS international partners. The use of Aquaporin membranes in the Space Station’s water filtration system could enable the substitution of the existing multi-filtration beds, a very heavy device requiring frequent replacement. Future applications include drinking water not only in space suits, but also in space capsules as well as in future space stations. The research also foresees the production of clean “technical” water for specific use such as the cooling of space suits and of spacecraft systems. Water purification of local sources found on celestial bodies will also be very important for future exploration starting with the exploration of our satellite, the Moon.
Innovation Benefits from space
The ESA-sponsored ISS water recovery investigation has helped the Aquaporin Space Alliance (ASA) and its parent company Aquaporin A/S to further commercialise the Aquaporin technology for ground-based applications. This and other Aquaporin activities have resulted in 7 additional patents and consideration in multiple scientific journals. Their recently developed production facility will be used to launch several more products into the advanced water treatment, food and beverage, and desalination markets.