Published By National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Issued over 9 years ago
Summary
Description
<p>The concept for this project is to take the hydrogen exhaust and inject it with a high mixture ratio of oxygen so the reaction produces steam.&nbsp; In theory, in a radioactive state, any trace amounts of radioactive noble gases released by off-nominal NTP engine reactor performance would be contained in the steam.&nbsp;&nbsp; Water is injected to condense the potentially contaminated steam into water. This water and the Gaseous Oxygen (GO2) would then be captured in a containment area where the water and GO2 would be divided into separate containment tanks.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>Additionally, the project will also look at mechanisms that may minimize the storage requirements, thereby, reducing hazard risk of these respective systems by using two methods for GO2 retention: (1) &nbsp;compressed gas storage system and (2) liquid storage.&nbsp; The compressed gas option would pump residual GO2 from the containment area at near ambient pressure to a 1000 psi Maximum Allowable Working Pressure (MAWP) storage vessel.&nbsp; The liquid storage option flows GO2 from the containment area through a liquid nitrogen (LN2) heat exchanger to liquefy the GO2 and store the liquefied oxygen (LO2) in a vacuum/LN2 jacketed tank for storage, decay, and subsequent disposal.</p>