Study on Difficulties Peculiar to The Water Coolants for Manned Space Systems

抄録

Active Thermal Control System (ATCS) is used to collect and transfer a large amount of heat in the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) Pressurized Module, which adopts a water-based coolant. To use this system, it is important to control and maintain coolant properties on orbit. This paper presents improvements of the water-based coolant to maintain its properties, detailed examples of anomalies that have occurred in the JEM and discusses their causes in details. In this study, we evaluate the latest prescription of the coolant proposed by NASA to determine if it was effective and stable with biocide, buffer of pH and corrosion inhibition. We also found the causes and the mechanism of the anomalies regarding the coolant in the ATCS.