Average age: 33! They spent 10 years to build a super "purifier" for China's space station

Rendering of the space station’s water recycling system.

The working effect of the space station's environmental control and life-saving urine treatment subsystem. Photo courtesy of the 206th Institute of the Second Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation

Where does the water that astronauts drink in space come from? Similar questions are raised in almost every space mission. In the first space teaching class held on the Chinese space station not long ago, a student asked how to solve the problem of drinking water and oxygen.

Ye Guangfu, an astronaut of Shenzhou 13, revealed that the food used in space had been sent to the Chinese space station in the early stage through "space express", and the domestic water comes from recycled water. The space station is equipped with a water regeneration system to achieve recycling.

Behind this, it is inseparable from the guarantee of China's space station's super "purifier" - the environmental control and life conservation urine treatment subsystem. The system can extract 5 liters of distilled water from 6 liters of urine, with a maximum water production rate of 2.5 liters per hour. The distilled water is purified by the water treatment subsystem and then recycled to meet the cleaning and oxygen production needs of astronauts working in the space station for a long time.

The average age of the system development team is 33 years old. It is this young team from the 206th Institute of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation II that has taken 10 years to turn their dreams into reality and successfully developed purification equipment for the stars, making it possible for Chinese astronauts to stay in space for a long time.

Pioneer

On April 29, 2021, the Long March 5B Yao-2 carrier rocket carried the Tianhe core module of the space station into the sky, drawing a bright arc along the sky. While countless people were cheering for the "power of China", the members of the space station environmental control and life support team of the 206th Institute of the Second Academy were still worried.

Until June 24, news of success came from above the stars. The environmental control and life-saving urine treatment subsystem developed by them successfully completed the first urine recovery, realizing the in-orbit recycling of water resources in the Chinese space station. The indicators of the distilled water produced met the usage requirements.

Some experts said that if astronauts are to stay in the space station for a long time, the problem of the "source of life" - water - must be solved. Otherwise, the construction of China's own space laboratory will be out of the question.

In 2012, there were still more than ten key technologies for the space station that were not available in China, including the urine treatment problem of the environmental control and life support system. It was also in that year that the 206th Institute of the Second Academy began to get involved in the space field and won the bidding for the development of the system, starting its own "Long March".

Bai Pengying, deputy director of the 206th Institute, said that everything had to start from scratch at the time. Faced with the long life and high reliability of space products as well as the mechanical, electrical, gas, liquid, and thermal technical challenges, the research and development team began a 10-year technical breakthrough.

"Space station urine processing technology is an internationally recognized technical challenge and one of the key technologies for the construction of my country's space station. Due to the technological blockade, it is basically impossible to find any technical information for reference," said Li Jiandong, deputy chief engineer of the Science and Technology Committee of the 206th Institute.

As the technical leader of the environmental control and life-saving urine processing subsystem, he led his team to develop technical solutions suitable for microgravity environments.

"At that time, we made seven or eight sets of prototypes. From prototypes to engineering products, we conducted hundreds of rounds of tests and finally solved the sealing problem," said Li Jiandong.

After ten years of hard work, Li Jiandong led the team to achieve a breakthrough from "0 to 1", and witnessed the difficult transformation of the environmental control and biosafety urine treatment subsystem from a prototype to a formal product.

youth

Liang Yingbin, a young man born in the 1980s who joined the team in 2015, has now grown into the backbone of the team. He solved the problems of system assembly and integration, wear and corrosion of rotating parts, and high-reliability disconnection, greatly improving the life of the product.

In June 2020, a certain test site implemented closed management. Zhang Yuxiang, a young designer who was on duty there, stayed on the spot. After more than 10 hours of testing every day, he slept on a camp bed. The most common food he ate was instant noodles, but he never complained.

Young designer Han Yuming told reporters that during the 50-day pre-simulation test at a certain test site, he and several colleagues including Wang Tianbao took turns on duty to observe the operation of the urine treatment subsystem in the monitoring room. In fact, during each shift of more than ten hours, the data on the computer screen often did not show any abnormalities. Instead, they had to get busy after the shift ended, as they needed to summarize and analyze the data during this period.

More than 50 days later, the moment they stepped out of the work building, the afternoon sun shone on their faces, and Han Yuming suddenly felt, "We seem to have accomplished something particularly great."

The urine treatment subsystem involves a large number of consumable materials, so the team conducted ground-based comparison tests. Li Xiaodan, the only female member who joined the team in 2018, spent 13 months with colleagues including Kan Chunlei and Zhan Deli to process more than 30,000 liters of sample water. They had to prepare water samples, take samples, test, analyze and record them many times a day. They mined patterns from hundreds of pages of data, which provided an important basis for the on-orbit replacement cycle of the product.

At the beginning of 2021, on the eve of the launch mission, the critical period of the system comprehensive experiment coincided with the Spring Festival holiday. At this time, the team members were distributed in the Wenchang Launch Site in Hainan, the Tianjin Large Spacecraft AIT Center, and the Beijing Astronaut Training Center, and were divided into three mission lines to carry out work simultaneously. Any flaws in the design, process, inspection, etc. of the product would lead to the delay of the launch mission.

In order to ensure the continuous operation of the test, the team members unanimously gave up the opportunity to reunite with their families and stayed at their posts on New Year's Eve. In the end, after many days and nights of overtime work, the product samples were delivered as scheduled.

Bai Pengying said that after 10 years, it is difficult to find the youthfulness and immaturity of the team members. What remains is the tenacity, faith and courage of Chinese astronauts after weathering hardships. Now, this young team is setting sail again on the journey to the stars and the sea.

(Reporter Qiu Chenhui, Zhao Sen)

Source: China Youth Daily