Microwaves to produce drinking water on the moon

Water is considered an important resource for the future colonization of the moon: as drinking water, as well as a supplier of hydrogen and oxygen for breathing air and fuel. However, the prospect of drinking water that was brought to the moon by comets billions of years ago does not exactly inspire confidence. The British company Naicker Scientific has developed a system to make the lunar water ice drinkable.

The task is not easy because of the conditions on the moon: the water ice is located at the bottom of craters where no sunlight reaches and where it is as cold as minus 200 degrees Celsius. There is no atmosphere on the moon and the gravity is just one sixth of that on earth. The system must also require relatively little energy.

Waves create bubbles

The SonoChem system works with micro and ultrasonic waves – The model was a conventional kitchen microwave. The waves are sent through the water and create millions of tiny bubbles in which extreme pressure and temperatures prevail. This creates free radicals in the bubbles. These unstable atoms, which are chemically very reactive, remove unwanted substances from the water.

Naicker Scientific won first prize in the Aqualunar Challenge with this development. The aim of the competition, which was organized by the space agencies of Great Britain and Canada, was to develop solutions for the provision of drinking water on the moon. The prize money for the winner was 150,000 British pounds, the equivalent of just under 180,000 euros.

SonoChem was developed for the moon. However, Lolan Naicker, Head of Technology at the company, also sees other possible applications: "If we can make the SonoChem system work there, we can use it anywhere, on the glaciers of Mars as well as here on Earth, in regions where access to clean water is still a problem."

However, Naicker Scientific has yet to prove that SonoChem actually works on the moon.

(wpl)