AN ANALYTICAL CASE STUDY

In our case study 1 kg of aluminum powder is selected for conversion into useful fuel onboard. It is evident from Figure 2 that aluminum alloys are the major constituent of the space debris [37], which often collide with the ISS. Note that using the recommended technique (see Figure1(a-b)), we estimated that, about 97 % of aluminum powder could be acquired from the hoarded aluminum debris. A loss of 3-5 % is anticipated after the water atomization process because of the sieving.
Note that by varying the water jet speed we could achieve the desired size of the powder. Granules’ size can be adjusted by either the water jet pressure or the nozzle size adjustment in which the molten liquid is poured [34, 38]. Water jet pressure can be controlled either by the nozzle jet size or water flow rate.
The process layout is depicted in Figure 1(a-b) . The required amount of electric power, water, heat, and the scale of pressure for converting the 1 kg of aluminum debris into fuel are highlighted in Table-1 . In order to process 1 kg of debris in a visual separator, an amount of 1.85 milliwatts power is required at an operating temperature of 40o C at a pressure of 700 kPa.