Does water evaporate on the international space station?

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Does water evaporate on the international space station?

In: Physics

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you mean in the way of boiling by itself:

No, the thing of evaporating without heat is because of pressure. Because the iss has approximately the same pressure as on earth, this doesn’t happen.

If you mean when cooked:

The problem here would be that the water couldn’t be uniformly warmed, atleast with a normal cooker. The hot water wouldn’t rise from the bottom.

If you mean in the way of evaporating from a lake:

Probably yes but rather small amounts. I’m assuming you would need some airflow for that, but that would only be provided by crew members flying by.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes it does, as long as the humidity is below 100% water will evaporate, and it needs to be kept fairly low to reduce condensation which is a real problem on the ISS. Micro gravity means no convection happens so without fans high humidity air tends to accumulate in spots and condense. They have lots of fans to try and reduce this and then use an air conditioner to reduce the humidity. This captures the water, and I believe they split it to make O2 and throw the hydrogen overboard.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes, water evaporates on the space station. And it is an actual problem – humidity management becomes an important issue. Otherwise if air cools in an unexpected area, water will condense where the air gets cool, and that means uncontrolled water collecting in unexpected places in the station. And that water could be collecting behind electrical panels and service hatches, which can lead to unexpected electrical faults.

So the ISS will actually have an air conditioning system to control humidity in the station.