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Liquid Oxygen from Lunar Rocks
SIInudeity writes "A South African chemical engineer has come up with a way to produce liquid oxygen from lunar rock. Oosthuizen is a co-inventor of the Ilmenox process, named after the process' ability to produce oxygen from the lunar mineral ilmenite. The process extracts oxygen from moonrock, which are metal-oxides that may contain up to 30 or 40% oxygen. By means of electro-chemical equipment, which has now been patented, the oxygen and the metal in the moonrock are split."
Actually, this may be one of the few times patents are mentioned in a slashdot story where a patent is actually appropriate!
In any case, patent or no, I also can't see it getting much use in the next decade. If a lunar base is built soon, the Ilmenox process would obviously be useful. But just how many devices could possibly be needed? Even repeated missions which leave a lot of equipment behind would only amount to a handful being used.
No, you don't. While it may be useful and even practical to develop industry on Luna, I can't think of a real reason to terraform it. Mars, on the other hand, is a much better candidate for terraforming, or at least modifying to create some atmosphere and agriculture sufficient to meet population demands.
Besides, the primary reason to get off the planet is preservation of the species. Terraforming Luna, which due to its proximity would very possibly be catastrophically affected by any major cataclysm of extra-terrestrial origin affecting Earth, really does not meet this goal.
This is good in at least we won't need to ship the O2, but where are we going to find the other little necessities of life (and most rocket fuel)?
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
So they've managed to split the metal out, but don't have the oxygen as straight O2 yet? The article is a bit short on details on this. If so, it's not going to be useful until he figures out how to get O2 (or H2O) through chemical reactions with whatever he's got now.
--Ender
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
I would like someone to look at that more closely - there are some well known age-old methods already around for chemically extracting oxygen from oxides & other minerals..
Maybe when we go to the moon, we should leave all the patents on earth!
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
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Done, good we can move to this 'moon' when it rips the earth apart.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
There's something that I don't get about this article. Current aluminum and titanium ARE refined electrolytically. What did this person do, apart from try to capture the oxygen? Did this person simply "invent" the addition of a pump and tank? Because that's what it sounds like.
;) ).
The problems with electrolytic refinement on a moon base are significant. First off, there's the mass issues; aluminum oxide is dissolved in molten cryolite (I'm not sure what they do for titanium). To build any significant sized refinement plant would not just involve the heavy vessels to contain the molten minerals (plus the crushers, conveyors, moulds, cranes, and all other associated equipment), but also shipping many tons of cryolite to the moon.
Secondly, there's the biggest limitation of refining on Earth: power costs. Refining separating that are this tightly bound to oxygen takes a *lot* of energy. Something like 70% of aluminum refining costs are simply to pay for electricity. Sure, there are ample potential sources of energy on the moon, but we have to pay to *ship the equipment to harness them up*, which is incredibly expensive.
Forget about exporting back to earth - lunar titanium and aluminum will cost an utter fortune because power will cost an utter fortune because the capital costs will be an utter fortune.
If we want to lower capital costs on the moon, we'll have to basically recreate almost all major pieces of human industry on the moon. That's such a huge task, it boggles the mind to try and picture it. Sure, as we progress, it becomes easier to advance lunar industry (when we can make aluminum pipes, those no longer need to be shipped; when we can make aluminum housing panels and I-beams, they no longer need to be shipped; when we can make a solder, that no longer needs to be shipped; etc). However, for most of its history, we'll still have to ship a sizable portion of its ever-expanding needs. And some things, they'll always need to import; the moon is very rich in some minerals, but compared to earth, it doesn't have much mineral diversity.
Sure, we can make aluminum structural materials and fiberglass insulation natively on the moon. But where's our copper for electronics? Where's our carbon and our nitrogen needed for life? Where's our hydrogen needed for almost everything (in the best lunar samples it was only 63.6 ppm)? The moon is sorely lacking.
Mind you, I support building a moonbase. I think it's pure idiocy to plan to try to establish all of these technologies in practice for the first time 3 months away from earth on Mars. However, I don't see the moon becoming remotely economically self-sustainable in our lifetimes, nor our children's (unless of course that society that thinks we'll all live around 1000 years is right
This wizard will complete the installation of: AQP AA002! P O a @ P @1 Ae IoD'i