New Mars Forums

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Martian industry

3D Printing a Prototype Lunar Habitat Floor?
https://www.fabbaloo.com/news/mx3d-3d-p … itat-floor

Life On Mars: Futuristic Homes Designed By 3D Printing To Give Earth-like Surrounding
https://www.republicworld.com/technolog … nding.html

Living Animals to Donate Blood for Material?
https://globalnews.ca/news/8191909/astr … ars-urine/

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Martian industry

Harvesting resources on Mars with plasmas

https://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Harve … s_999.html

An international team of researchers came up with a plasma-based way to produce and separate oxygen within the Martian environment. It's a complementary approach to NASA's Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, and it may deliver high rates of molecule production per kilogram of instrumentation sent to space.

Such a system could play a critical role in the development of life-support systems on Mars and the feedstock and base chemicals necessary for processing fuels, building materials, and fertilizers.

In the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing, the team from the University of Lisbon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sorbonne University, Eindhoven University of Technology, and the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research presented a method for harnessing and processing local resources to generate products on Mars.

Natural conditions on the red planet are nearly ideal for in situ resource utilization by plasmas, since the atmosphere is primarily formed by carbon dioxide that can be split to produce oxygen and its pressure is favorable for plasma ignition.

Two big hurdles stand in the way of producing oxygen on Mars.

"First, the decomposition of carbon dioxide molecules to extract oxygen. It's a very difficult molecule to break," said author Vasco Guerra, of the University of Lisbon. "Second, the separation of the produced oxygen from a gas mixture that also contains, for example, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. We're looking at these two steps in a holistic way to solve both challenges at the same time. This is where plasmas can help."

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,433

Re: Martian industry

we know that the levels of energy in any form are required to unlock the oxygen within mars regolith soils.
It's not a secret it's the quantity of it that is required.

In another topic the desire is to get steel from the soils.

partial snip

From Robert's materials page.

'Smelting iron
Carbon monoxide combines with iron oxides in the ore to produce metallic iron. This is the basic chemical reaction in the blast furnace; it has the equation: Fe2O3 + 3CO → 3CO2 + 2Fe. The usual way of producing steel has been to produce pig iron first in a blast furnace, then convert it into steel in a Bassemer converter. The Bassemer literally burns off impurities by injecting large quantities of oxygen.

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Martian industry

The Industry of Iron

Rising Electricity Prices Pushed up Smelters’ Costs
https://news.metal.com/newscontent/1019 … %99-Costs/

More smelters face closure as Europe enters power-starved winter
https://www.ft.com/content/0906df5d-1b9 … e7b1055897

Now how to send equipment to make it happen, perhaps the AI Robots will build themselves, 3-D printed machines will build more machines and make their own factory before the human arrives?