Review of water disinfection techniques

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Review of water disinfection techniques

Colombo, G.V. / Sauer, R.L.

Throughout the history of manned space flight the supply of portable water to the astronauts has presented unique problems. Of particular concern has been the microbiological quality of the portable water. This has required the development of both preflight water system servicing procedures to disinfect the systems and inflight distinfectant addition and monitoring devices to ensure continuing microbiological control. The disinfectants successfully used to data have been aqueous chlorine or iodine. Because of special system limitations the use of iodine has been the most successful for inflight use and promises to be the agent most likely to be used in the future. Future spacecraft portable, hygiene, and experiment water systems will utilize recycled water. This will present special problems for water quality control. NASA is currently conducting research and development to solve these problems.