Power And Water Plant

Probably the most important functions for the survival of those at McMurdo are the power generation and water production.

I visited both facilities and felt like ECLSS/ATLAS again (my positions at NASA in Mission Control that dealt with similar functions).

Power Plant-

First, I was shown their displays, which looked very similar to some displays we use on ISS. The supervisor said they get alarms on these screens they are watching. The system sends emails and pages to them as well when a parameter is not nominal. They can also send commands from their displays.






There are several power feeds that remind me of MBSUs (main bus switching unit) on ISS. If one goes down, another picks up most of the load. 




There’s five ginormous generators with two running at a time. They use JP8 aviation fuel.




Moving on to the water plant…..

Seawater is pumped to the building through an insulated pipeline approximately 3,000 ft in length. Here’s part of the line and a pump.




 It’s processed and goes through reverse osmosis to form potable water. The system is capable of producing over 700,000 gallons per day of fresh water.

The blue parts below are adding chlorine to the water.



The big green tanks are the treated water storage tanks. Between all four they store a max capacity of 205k gallons.




Those long white tubes are for the reverse osmosis. They take the salt out of the water and make it drinkable.






They are constantly checking the chemical balance of the water.



The freshwater is distributed to the buildings using an above ground insulated piping system.


It was a fun tour, but also loud in both areas. Everyone had to wear hearing protection. 


Nice to see the essential functions that support life here at McMurdo.


Comments

  1. Mae TravelsOctober 13, 2022 at 4:12 PM

    Can't they use melted snow to create the water supply? It's interesting to see how all this works.

    best... mae at maefood.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kevin S.October 28, 2022 at 6:02 AM

    Curious on the size of the JP8 storage tanks? Also how many water/wastewater operators you have at the station?

    Looking forward to some pictures of some NY C-130s the ski herc's.

    ReplyDelete

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