Humans exhale carbon dioxide when they breathe. if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air that people breathe gets too high, it can be fatal. therefore, in space shuttles, submarines, and other sealed environments, it is common to use "air scrubbers" to remove carbon dioxide from the air. the air scrubbers on the space shuttle remove carbon dioxide by using lithium hydroxide (lioh). the reaction in the air scrubbers is shown below: co2 + 2lioh to li2co3 + h2o each astronaut produces 8.8 × 102 g co2 per day that must be removed from the air on the shuttle. if a typical shuttle mission is 9 days, and the shuttle can carry 3.50 × 104 g lioh, what is the maximum number of people the shuttle can safely carry for one mission?

The reaction equation is:
CO₂ + 2LiOH → Li₂CO₃ + H₂O

First, we calculate the total amount of carbon dioxide that may be absorbed by the mass of LiOH that is present. This is done by first computing the moles of LiOH. The molecular weight of LiOH is 24 grams per mole.

Moles = 35,000 / 24
1,458 moles of LiOH

From the reaction equation, we see that the molar ratio between carbon dioxide and lithium hydroxide is:
1 : 2

So the moles of carbon dioxide that may be captured are:
1,458/2

729 moles of carbon dioxide may be captured.

Converting this to the mass of carbon dioxde, given that the molecular weight of carbon dioxide is 44 grams per mole,

mass = 729 * 44
32,076 grams of CO₂ may be captured.

This is the amount removable over 9 days, so the per day amount will be:

32,076 / 9
3,564 grams of CO₂ may be removed daily

Each astronaut produces 880 grams of CO₂ daily, so the number of astronauts that may be brought on board are:

3,564 / 880 = 4.05

4 astronauts may be taken on the mission.