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It has been a while since chemistry for me, but I was considering what could be manufacture on Mars in the way of greehouse gases. It occured to me that there must be some way to combine 2 H2O with CO2 and produce CH4+O3+O yes I realize that the oxygen will form into O2.
So we can get methane, ozone and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water. Now that would require a great deal of power. A nuclear reactor near a pole could easily be supplied with the water for the process and as coolant.
It would seem to be the best strategy for producing greenhouse gases and an ozone layer with existing technology.
Is this feasible, and what do you think?
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It has been a while since chemistry for me, but I was considering what could be manufacture on Mars in the way of greehouse gases. It occured to me that there must be some way to combine 2 H2O with CO2 and produce CH4+O3+O yes I realize that the oxygen will form into O2.
So we can get methane, ozone and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water. Now that would require a great deal of power. A nuclear reactor near a pole could easily be supplied with the water for the process and as coolant.
It would seem to be the best strategy for producing greenhouse gases and an ozone layer with existing technology.
Is this feasible, and what do you think?
its doable but not feasible...
ozone just so happens to break down methane so all that work to produce methane and ozone would just go back to water and CO2. what your are better off doing is creating super greenhouse gases such as pfc's, carbon you can get from the air and the fluorine you can obtain from metal extracting processes. PFC'S can be up to 9,200 times more of a green house gas than CO2 alone, and they dont break down in the harsh atmosphere as easily.
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Well a certain amount of ozone and methane have to be able to coexist in the atmosphere since both are present in our own. Instead of converting the oxygen into ozone, one could just produce methane and oxygen. The oxygen would likely be in very small amounts, but it would increase the partial pressure and could help pave the way for aerobic plants and bacteria.
The methane was the primary benefit of the strategy which I was suggesting, ozone would have been a nice bonus, but isn't critical. PFCs hold promise, but I still have doubts as to the efficiancy of producing them on Mars. They are better green house gases, but it make take a disproportionately greater amount of energy and time to manufacture them.
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there is methane and ozone in both earth and mars... however they are being continuously being created and destroyed and dont get above a few ppm. especially on mars. methane only lasts for about 9 years before it gets destroyed which does beg the question why is it still there and how is it being replenished.. since there is thought to be no volcanic activity.
see the only thing bad with your idea.. which i though about doing before is that fact that you'd be pumping out methane and you'd be pumping out tons and tons and it wouldnt accumulate in the atmosphere until it has used up the ozone and O2. PFC'S do take a greater amount of energy, but they are able to hold in exceptionally more heat and they would last a lot longer (thousands of years) and dont get eaten away by ozone.
but either way what we need to do is increase the pressure and warm up the planet. and a benefit of releasing O2 from the soil is that it will come into contact with UV light and a decent portion will become O3 anyways.
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dreammaker,
I'm not sure the pressure issue is a main one on mars, just heating up Mars takes care of the severe low pressure once we get to the melt point of water.
I think bacteria would do a nice job of converting Martian elements into useful greenhouse gasses and other useful items for colonists.
All we need for anaerobic bacteria is liquid h20, heat, food and a simple home such as vast plastic bags on the surface.
Select the bacteria on earth that produces the most waste products useful for greenhouse gas.
A similar system with algae and clear plastic could produce a simple food chain and o2 for the colonists and as fuel.
Probably no need for huge nuclear reactors as all we need is heat and small pressure pumps, solar cells and batteries would probably do the job.
With the production of methane and o2 we have fuel to power everything.
Science facts are only as good as knowledge.
Knowledge is only as good as the facts.
New knowledge is only as good as the ones that don't respect the first two.
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