The Air Company of Brooklyn has devised a way to recycle the carbon dioxide that astronauts exhale during flight to make yeast-based nutrients into a protein drink intended to feed astronauts on long-duration missions into deep space.
The company’s co-founder and chief technology officer, Stafford Sheehan, said he originally developed his carbon conversion technology as a way to produce high-purity alcohol for jet fuel and perfume, reports Al-Rai daily.
The NASA-sponsored Deep Space Food Challenge encouraged Sheehan to modify his invention to produce edible proteins, carbohydrates, and fats from the same system.
Sheehan, who holds a Ph.D in physical chemistry from Yale University, stated that what resulted from the single-cell protein drink, which entered the “NASA” competition, has the consistency of a whey protein mixture and tastes similar to “seitan”, which is a food prepared from wheat gluten that originated in East Asia. Vegetarians use it as a vegetarian alternative to meat.
Beyond protein drinks, the same process can be used to produce other carbohydrate-filled alternatives to bread, pasta and tortillas.
This month, NASA announced the victory of the patented IRMED technology, among eight other technologies, in the second phase of its food competition, with a prize of $750,000.
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