Electrochemical Approaches to "Living off the Land" in Space
Electrochemical Approaches to "Living off the Land" in Space
复制标题
DOI：
10.1149/2.f09201if
复制
发表时间：
2020-03-01
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
Hintze, Paul E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Jackson, Gregory S.;Elangovan, S.;Hintze, Paul E.
The mode of shipping all necessary materials, propellants, and supplies to space out of Earth’s gravity well cannot support long-term, robust space activities and space missions that enable a vital economy or long-term human exploration. The propellant and overall cost required to lift large masses and volumes (including the propellant itself) grows geometrically with the mass of the payload. A recent extensive overview by Kornuta and co-authors from the space industry, academia, and US government agencies analyzed the geology, technology, and overall value statement of producing propellant from ice in the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) of the Moon. 1 As stated in their analysis, justification for Moon-based electrolysis systems to convert lunar ice to liquid H2 (LH2) and O2 (LOX) is derived from the exorbitant cost of sending the same fuel to the Moon from Earth,~ $36,000/kg. Such costs for shipping to the Moon also apply to high-density structural and functional materials and have motivated numerous research and development efforts on molten electrolysis to convert lunar oxide minerals into O2 and metals such as Si, Fe, Al, and various alloys. 2-6 For missions and activities beyond the Moon, most notably to Mars, required propellant and costs per kg of mass shipped from Earth become significantly more prohibitive, and as such, many future missions for expanding Mars operations rely on producing propellant and materials from the Moon as well as on the Red Planet. 7The extraterrestrial production of useful chemicals and materials to support space operations is generally referred to as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). A principal challenge with ISRU lies in the fact that most available compounds and materials on near-earth bodies, such as the Moon, Mars, and neighboring asteroids, are in low energy states, such as metal oxides, CO2, H2O, H2S, etc. To upgrade these compounds and materials economically to useful propellants, metals, or other structural or functional materials requires highly selective, energy-intensive processes that must utilize abundant energy sources like solar energy. To this end, electrochemical processes driven by photovoltaic conversion of sunlight or perhaps by an installed nuclear power source present a logical approach to meet the energy challenges for ISRU deployment. Electrochemical processes can provide high selectivity of products, but future integrated systems must be automated and extremely robust to survive the harsh requirements of transport to space and operation in extraterrestrial environments. As mentioned before, electrolysis for LH2/LOX propellants from lunar ice presents a noteworthy example of how electrochemistry can play a vital role in ISRU. However, there have been numerous other research and development efforts that involve electrochemical systems that can support space-related activities, such as the soon-
