HomeSpace & AstronomySpacecraft Water Recovery System

Spacecraft Water Recovery System

Interactive 3D vapor-compression distillation water-recovery simulator: tune crew size, wastewater feed and recycling efficiency and watch a spacecraft's potable-water reserve rise or drain as the closed-loop mass balance plays out.

Space & Astronomy3DModerate60 FPS
space-life-support-challenges ↗ Open standalone

Every long-duration spacecraft closes its water loop with a vapor-compression distillation unit that boils, recompresses and condenses wastewater back into drinkable water. This simulator models the real mass balance behind that hardware: adjust crew size, how much wastewater actually reaches the distiller, and the unit's single-pass recovery efficiency, and watch spheres of contaminated feed split into a potable stream and a brine stream in that exact ratio while a live reserve tank tracks whether the loop is actually closing. A Filter Fouling Event button drops efficiency for a few simulated days so you can see how quickly even a modest efficiency loss turns a stable reserve into a draining one — the same reason real ECLSS hardware is built for 90%+ recovery rather than "good enough."

⚙ Under the hood

Interactive 3D vapor-compression distillation simulator: tune crew size, wastewater feed and recycling efficiency and watch a spacecraft's potable-water reserve rise or drain as the closed-loop mass balance plays out.

ECLSSwater recyclinglife supportvapor compression distillationmass balancespacecraft

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install

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