European microgravity facilities for zeolite experiments on the international space station
- Paper ID
IAF-02-J.3.08
- author
- company
Manned Spaceflight and Microgravty Directorate, ESTEC, European Space Agency
- country
The Netherlands
- year
2002
- abstract
Synthetic zeolites are complex porous silicates. Zeolite catalysis and related zeolite-based technologies have a growing impact on the economics and sustainability of products and processes in a growing number of industrial sectors, including environmental protection and nanotechnology. A Sounding Rocket microgravity experiment led to significant insight in the physical aggregation patterns of zeolitic nanoscopic particles and the occurrence of self-organisation phenomena when undisturbed by convection. The opportunity of performing longer microgravity duration experiments on zeolite structures was recently offered in the frame of a Taxi-Flight to the International Space Station (ISS) in November 2002 organized by Belgium and the European Space Agency (ESA). Two facilities are currently under development for this flight. One of them will use the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) in the US Lab. Destiny to achieve thermal induced selforganization of different types of Zeosil nanoslabs by heating and cooling. The other facility will be flown on the ISS Russian segment and will allow to form Zeogrids at ambient temperature. On the other hand, ESA is studying the possibility of developing a dedicated insert for zeolite experiments to be used with the optical and diagnostic platform of the Protein Crystallisation Diagnostic Facility (PCDF), that will fly integrated in the European Drawer Rack on the Columbus Laboratory starting in 2004. This paper presents the approach followed by ESA to prepare and support zeolite investigations in microgravity and will present the design concept of these facilities.