Experiments to complete scientific understanding of how reduced gravity affects boiling and condensation
With temperatures on the moon ranging from minus 410 to a scorching 250 degrees Fahrenheit, it's an understatement to say that humans will need habitats with heat and air conditioning to survive there long term.
But heating and cooling systems won't be effective enough to support habitats for lunar exploration or even longer trips to Mars without an understanding of what reduced gravity does to boiling and condensation. Engineers haven't been able to crack this science—until now.
"Every refrigerator, every air conditioning system we have on Earth involves boiling and condensation. Those same mechanisms are also prevalent in numerous other applications, including steam power plants, nuclear reactors and both chemical and pharmaceutical industries," said Issam Mudawar, Purdue University's Betty Ruth and Milton B. Hollander Family Professor of Mechanical Engineering. "We have developed over a hundred years' worth of understanding of how these systems work in Earth's gravity, but we haven't known how they work in weightlessness."
A team of engineers at Purdue led by Mudawar, who is collaborating with NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, has spent 11 years developing a facility to investigate these phenomena.
The facility is called the Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE). Initial designs were tested on Zero Gravity Corporation's (Zero-G) weightless research lab, a specially modified Boeing 727 that flies parabolic maneuvers to create the reduced gravities on the moon and Mars as well as the weightless conditions in space.
An experiment designed by Purdue University researchers to study the effects of reduced gravity on boiling is loaded onto a Cygnus spacecraft in preparation for launch onboard an Antares rocket to the International Space Station. Credit: Northrop Grumman/NASA
Purdue University engineers conducted the first phase of the Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment using the Flow Boiling Module, which gathered data on how boiling happens in reduced gravity. Pictured here is this module prior to being launched for installation on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA Glenn Research Center