Chinese scientists find method to extract water from Chang’e-5 lunar samples
Proposed concept for extracting water from
lunar regoilth
Chinese scientists have found that by heating Chang’e-5 lunar samples to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit it is possible to extract a significant amount of water. From the paper’s abstract:
FeO and Fe2O3 are lunar minerals containing Fe oxides. Hydrogen (H) retained in lunar minerals from the solar wind can be used to produce water. The results of this study reveal that 51–76 mg of H2O can be generated from 1 g of LR [lunar regolith] after melting at temperatures above 1200 K. This amount is ∼10,000 times the naturally occurring hydroxyl (OH) and H2O on the Moon. … Our findings suggest that the hydrogen retained in LR is a significant resource for obtaining H2O on the Moon, which are helpful for establishing scientific research station on the Moon.
A video in Chinese (hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay) that describes this research can be found here. (If any of my readers understands Chinese and can provide a translation of this video’s narration, I would be very grateful.) It includes an artist’s rendering (screen capture to the right) showing how such a system on the Moon could work to extract water from the soil. Sunlight would be focused by a lensed mirror into a glass-domed container, heating the ground. The water would evaporate, condense on the glass and be sucked into a tube that would transfer it to a water tank.
This design is of course very simple and preliminary. According to Jay, “They need to heat the soil to 1000℃ (1832°F) to get the iron oxide in the lunar soil to split, the oxygen combines with hydrogen to make water and iron (melting point of iron is about 1500℃). You will need a nuclear reactor to produce that much power for an inductive furnace to get that hot. Doing the calculation, it would take about 245kw to heat up a metric ton of dirt in one hour to a 1000℃ degrees. It could be done slower over 24 hours at 10kw.”
Despite the technical difficulties getting such equipment operational on the Moon, that this research suggests water can be produced practically anywhere on the lunar surface is signficant. It suggests that even if no easily accessible water ice is found in the permanently shadowed craters at the poles, lunar bases still have viable options for obtaining water, and they don’t have even be at the poles.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Proposed concept for extracting water from
lunar regoilth
Chinese scientists have found that by heating Chang’e-5 lunar samples to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit it is possible to extract a significant amount of water. From the paper’s abstract:
FeO and Fe2O3 are lunar minerals containing Fe oxides. Hydrogen (H) retained in lunar minerals from the solar wind can be used to produce water. The results of this study reveal that 51–76 mg of H2O can be generated from 1 g of LR [lunar regolith] after melting at temperatures above 1200 K. This amount is ∼10,000 times the naturally occurring hydroxyl (OH) and H2O on the Moon. … Our findings suggest that the hydrogen retained in LR is a significant resource for obtaining H2O on the Moon, which are helpful for establishing scientific research station on the Moon.
A video in Chinese (hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay) that describes this research can be found here. (If any of my readers understands Chinese and can provide a translation of this video’s narration, I would be very grateful.) It includes an artist’s rendering (screen capture to the right) showing how such a system on the Moon could work to extract water from the soil. Sunlight would be focused by a lensed mirror into a glass-domed container, heating the ground. The water would evaporate, condense on the glass and be sucked into a tube that would transfer it to a water tank.
This design is of course very simple and preliminary. According to Jay, “They need to heat the soil to 1000℃ (1832°F) to get the iron oxide in the lunar soil to split, the oxygen combines with hydrogen to make water and iron (melting point of iron is about 1500℃). You will need a nuclear reactor to produce that much power for an inductive furnace to get that hot. Doing the calculation, it would take about 245kw to heat up a metric ton of dirt in one hour to a 1000℃ degrees. It could be done slower over 24 hours at 10kw.”
Despite the technical difficulties getting such equipment operational on the Moon, that this research suggests water can be produced practically anywhere on the lunar surface is signficant. It suggests that even if no easily accessible water ice is found in the permanently shadowed craters at the poles, lunar bases still have viable options for obtaining water, and they don’t have even be at the poles.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
You could also use lowtech solar concentrators, they can melt steel.
Seems like I recall a demonstration on TV back in the day ( 1970’s). Some lunar rock samples were taken and heated up, and a small amount of water was obtained.
So this isn’t really new. It only seems new because we never went back.
The interesting bits are the numbers. 51 to 76mg of water per gram of regolith is 5 to 7.5%, which is quite a lot I would say. And 245KWHr to process a metric ton of regolith is well within the means of a quite feasible solar array as ISS sports at least 75KW of capacity..
So running some numbers with say a 125KW array you could process about 12 metric tons of regolith a day yielding somewhere between 600 to 900 liters of water per day. Quite sufficient for a decent sized base I would think.
And by using more solar to break some of this water down into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis, you could use those resources to make rocket fuel and to store fuel for the 2 week Lunar nights for a fuel cell.
And with this much water in play you could even envision 2M thick water skylights for the habitats, providing an opportunity to enjoy the cosmic IMAX in a safe radiation shielded environment!!! Welcome to the atrium of the Grand Hyatt Cosmos! : )
A very useful science result. Kudos to the PRC.
In addition to 5 – 7% water, a far larger fraction of the processed regolith mass will be iron – a material at least as useful on the Moon as it is on Earth, especially as the Moon has no oxygen-rich atmosphere to cause any outdoor infrastructure constructed from it to rust. The rest of the regolith will consist mostly of lighter metallic oxides that can also be smelted to produce pure metals with oxygen as a byproduct.
Sorry guys, I should of specified it was 245kW thermal, not electric. If it is done with an inductive furnace, which is about 80% efficient (power factor), then it is over 307 kW, and yes over one hour 307 kW-Hr. The 10kW was thermal as well, so 12.5kW times 24 hours, over 300kW-Hr.
Extracting the gasses this way is a pretty good idea and easy to do. melt everything down and while its still hot pour it out into a large pit.
Essentially saving the metals for later.
Eventually a whole smelting and extraction facility could be set up.
Sadly though I predict everything extracted from the Moon will need to be used on the Moon.
I’m not a metallurgist, but I’ve been neckdeep in the mining industry for the past 30 years.
The modern processing of ore into metals is a well understood industry, including the gassing off of the heated materials into a wide variety of waste gases, some of which are not legal to dump into the atmosphere.
(cyanide gas, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide etc.)
Although neighboring metal manufacturers on the great Salt Lake in Utah often release large quantities of chlorine gas allowed (exempt) by the EPA as a byproduct of electrolyzing salt. It’s the largest supplier of strategic metals needed by the military complex for magnesium. (Along with magnesium chloride is potassium chloride and sodium chloride) then there’s the borax, lithium, and “fluoride” (which is more Neuro toxic than lead but less then arsenic). (I should note that communities near this processing facilities have the highest cancer rates per capita in the Country)
United States has just 2 working smelters. (Think about that) The Rio Tinto smelter at salt air facility is owned by Australia which is owned by the king of England. (The continent, not the people)
It produces an enormous amount of fugitive gases from the arc furnaces when the concentrate is being melted and poured into anodes for the refining process. The largest of which is water and sulfur which is captured and placed into RR tankers as sulfuric acid. (fertilizer)
Although copper is the main product, it is also the most productive gold mine in the world. Large amounts of silver, lead, bismuth, iron, zinc, telluride, rhenium, molybdenum, and a bunch of other rare earth metals that we send to China so they can make magnets. (each metal is a strategic asset throughout the manufacturing industry as important as water/oxygen)
Silicates, iron, carbon are waste products (slag) probably used as ballast, but also useful for a hard surface for landing pads were concrete is unavailable… Yet.
My point being that the lunar surface is similar to earth in it’s composition. Mostly silicon dioxide. (sand) and gases trapped from the solar wind loaded with hydrogen and helium. So if power is not a problem, production of Iron meteorites/metals into bricks for landing pads, habitats, tunneling and earthmoving equipment will have a natural byproduct of water… and dozens if not hundreds of other useful and not so useful compounds… but nothing will be wasted.
For instance the underground tunnels both on moon and mars will probably be constructed from melted regolith extracting the oxygen and using the liquid glass as tunnel barriers/a non-toxic seal against toxic gases emitted from the rock. All underground mines require large amount of breathable air for miners, which is not possible on the moon even if the working tunnel can be pressurized. A workaround must be established if you don’t wanna live in a space suit or carry an oxygen tank and mask.
Fortunately for us earthlings, 2 miles of the surface of the moon facing earth is missing, exposing lunar core material ready for mining. (The result of a not so near miss collision between the earth and moon that deposited the lunar material and created heavy elements from the high temperature plasmas (that rival a supernova) that landed on top of earths ancient carbon dioxide/lime stone bones of plankton responsible for the oxygen atmosphere. This formed Pangea, the continents that slide around in continental drift on top of that ancient life of calcium carbonate fossils creating “fossil fuel”. This put the earth on fire, called the first extinction event, fortunately those heavy metals also landed in the crust where we can mine it.
The eccentric orbit of earths new moon (Thea, also referred to as a Mars size object) would not allow the new unstable land masses to settle quietly, it used it’s gravitational pull to make them move around. Some subcontinents like Italy, and India move violently creating mountain ranges like the Himalayas… And yes mount Everest is made out of lime stone from the bottom of the ocean. Tell people that next time you hear someone bring up carbon capturing… 1/10 of the crust of earth is carbon.
I hope we find enough carbon on the moon to start large farms or will need to bring it from earth… Probably in the form of dead bodies from geriatric centers, people wanting to die in low gravity. (Like Dune funerals, water and carbon which pays its own transportation expenses) Mars won’t have that problem, ice caps full of water and oxygenated carbon…
Max,
Thank you for your input on this subject with your knowledge and experience in the mining field. Extracting water and iron is great, but the other benefits of the lunar soil that you wrote about is even better. Good idea about the use of the slag.