When you mention Life Support Systems in a conversation people often think of mechanical devices such as medical ventilators and heart monitors as seen on the ICU. However, when it comes to Life Support Systems to support life under harsh conditions such as hot desserts, life in space and other planets there is also another method. That method is based on biological components such as plants and algae.
Plants and algae produce Oxygen and are known for their use in systems that purify waste water. Plants and algae are both known to uptake Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Compounds human waste products that eventually can lead to polluted and toxic environments. Eventually plants can be used to produce food such as vegetables. Where mechanical devices are often build to perform one function biological systems are multifunctional and are scalable to a larger size or multiple systems. Biological systems can be used to remove hazardous substances such as Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Compounds, produce Oxygen, clean water and produce food.
In 2016 I started the development of my first Bioregenerative Life Support system. It was a small sized Life Support System designed to support a population of gastropods. The system produced algae for the gastropods to eat and a strain of Elodea Canadensis was added to the system for Oxygen production and the removal of Carbon Dioxide and Nitrogen Compounds.
In 2025 I started experimenting with vegetable based systems using waste water for the production of vegetables. I started cultivating various vegetables such as lettuce, tomatoes and peppers under low watt lighting systems as seen on board the International Space Station. Eventually I decided that for my setup peppers would be the best choice. The Lettuce plants soon developed growth problems where the leaves would turn the bottom of the leaves toward the light source. Eventually the peppers seemed more suitable for the cultivation in small spaces and were more solid with better root development compared with the tomato plants. More information about this setup can be found at the waste to food project on my project page.
One of my latest experiments is the development of a terrestrial Life Support System to support a population of isopods. As with most development projects the first fase is mostly determining basic problems. With this system one problem was that isopods need humidity for their respiratory organs to function but humidity in unventilated spaces also result in mold development. Eventually mold can become a health risk and it can also lead to sensor failure or damage the gaskets that seal the system. Until now I was able to keep a population of isopods alive for 3 months before the humidity dropped and the isopod population died. At this moment the first challenges are to keep the systems humidity at a constant level and prevent the excessive growth of mold.
