Blue Origin extracts oxygen from regolith
A viable moon station must be supplied from local resources. Blue Origin has developed a system that extracts breathable air from moon dust.
Artistic representation of an Air Pioneer system on the Moon
(Image: Blue Origin)
Oxygen from moon dust: US space company Blue Origin has announced it has developed a technique to extract oxygen from regolith. This could enable moon inhabitants to produce breathable air or rocket fuel in the future.
The device, developed by Blue Origin, founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is called Air Pioneer. It is modular and consists of two components: a reactor and a purification system. The system works with electrolysis, meaning it splits the material into its constituent parts using electric current. It requires about one megawatt to operate.
In the first step, the sand in the reactor is melted at a temperature of approximately 1600 degrees Celsius. The current is then passed through the melt, releasing oxygen and other gases. The gases are passed through the purification system and converted into medical oxygen and propellant-grade oxygen, Blue Origin announced via the X microblogging service. This is how breathable air is produced from moon dust.
Regolith has useful components and bad properties
Regolith is a very fine, sharp-edged sand that causes headaches for the space industry; it is electrostatic and adheres to anything with an electrical charge. It is also very abrasive and damages anything it comes into contact with.
The sand consists largely of oxides, primarily silicon and aluminum oxide. Oxygen makes up almost half of the regolith. It also contains other substances like iron.
During electrolysis, the negatively charged oxygen migrates to one electrode, while positively charged particles like metals or silicon migrate to the other. The latter can also be obtained with the Air Pioneer, for example, to produce solar cells from silicon. The idea of extracting oxygen from regolith is several years old: the European aerospace company Airbus, for instance, tried its hand at it.
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"Launching less mass from Earth lowers the cost of our Moon base," Blue Origin writes in another X post. "To build an affordable, sustainable presence on the Moon, we must learn to live off the land."
(wpl)
