2024-02-11 11:36:08
When building bases on the Moon or Mars, the ideal way to keep costs down is to source building materials locally. However, it is difficult to implement the manufacturing and processing methods for building materials that are widely used on Earth on the Moon or Mars.
A research team led by Washington State University’s Azmain F. Islam and Soumik Banerjee has developed a new technology that can melt metal elements from rocks and print them using 3D printers.ionic liquid” and selected the most suitable ionic liquid for regolith on the Moon and Mars. the result,From hundreds of thousands of candidates, we select the six most suitable ones.I was able to do. By narrowing down the candidates in advance, there is a possibility that they will be utilized in future empirical research.
[▲Figure 1: An imaginary drawing of a manned activity base built in the lunar south pole (Credit: SOM)]
■The difficulty of procuring building materials on the Moon and Mars has been a long-standing issue
The most ideal environment for conducting research on the Moon or Mars is an environment where humans can stay on the Moon or Mars for a long period of time, and to achieve this, it is necessary to create bases where humans can live permanently. Transporting the building materials needed to construct a base from Earth would be extremely expensive, so it would be ideal to process local rocks to make building materials, and research is continuing to find the best way to do this. .
Related article: Locally source as much as possible. Utilizing lunar surface “regolith” to support sustainable manned exploration (July 20, 2019)
Related article: It turns out that mixing Martian regolith with titanium alloy can increase its strength (September 23, 2022)
Rocks on the surfaces of the Moon and Mars are made into a sand-like material called regolith, which has extremely fine and sharp shapes due to the effects of micrometeorites and solar wind. The simplest method is to solidify regolith and process and use it like bricks, but to create more sturdy and complex structures, metal frameworks are required. To create such building materials, metal elements must be extracted from the regolith.
On Earth, it is common practice to extract only metallic elements by melting rocks at high heat, electrolyzing them, or mixing them with other substances. However, on the Moon and Mars, it is difficult to procure energy to generate heat and electricity, and materials to mix. While some methods require little energy, many are still difficult to implement because they require large amounts of water, a precious resource on the Moon and Mars.
■Extracting metals using “ionic liquid”
Islam and Banerjee’s research team said,ionic liquid” specializes in. An ionic liquid is literally a liquid substance made of ions. Sodium chloride is a very familiar example of a substance made of ions, but it is usually a solid, as it does not liquefy unless heated to 800°C. However, some substances made of ions have the unusual property of remaining in a liquid state even at room temperature. This is an ionic liquid.
Ionic liquids are mainly used in battery development research because they conduct electricity easily, but they also have another property: they dissolve metal elements when they come into contact with minerals that make up rocks. This means that ionic liquids can be used to extract metallic elements from rocks at low energy costs. Ionic liquids are difficult to evaporate and have high chemical stability, so they can be reused many times. The extraction process from rocks can also produce oxygen and water as by-products. Best of all, its liquid nature makes it suitable for making building materials using 3D printers.
However, ionic liquids are made from a combination of multiple substances, and there are countless candidates. It can be said that there are countless types and combinations of minerals that make up the regolith of the Moon and Mars. It is not realistic to experimentally measure the extraction efficiency of each of these combinations.
■Narrowing down the optimal ionic liquid from hundreds of thousands of candidates
Islam and Banerjee conducted research through machine learning and modeling to find the optimal ionic liquid. We investigated which type of ionic liquid has superior extraction performance for sodium, magnesium, and aluminum, which are typical metal elements contained in regolith and each has a different valence.
the result,From hundreds of thousands of candidates, we finally narrowed it down to six types of ionic liquids.I was able to. When selecting these ionic liquids, Mr. Islam and Mr. Banerjee consider the size of the cations contained in the ionic liquid, the number of electrons on the liquid surface (surface charge density), and the ease with which the ions can move to determine the extraction efficiency. It has been shown to have a significant impact.
[▲Figure2:ZinccompounddissolvedintheionicliquidwhichwasoneofthecandidatesinthisresearchNotethattheamountofwhitepowderonthelowersideinsidethecontainerdecreasesontherightsidewheretheionicliquidisplaced(Credit:AzmainFIslam&SoumikBanerjee)
Islam and Banerjee are already working with researchers at the University of Colorado to test some of the candidates. This type of experiment is possible because the candidates have been narrowed down in advance. Regarding this achievement, Banerjee said, “The machine learning work brought us down from the 20,000-foot to 1,000-foot altitude. the 1,000-foot level).
Mr. Islam and Mr. Banerjee plan to conduct extraction experiments at even larger sizes to test whether the ionic liquid can actually be used in the production of building materials for base construction.
Source
- Azmain F. Islam & Soumik Banerjee. “Toward Metal Extraction from Regolith: Theoretical Investigation of the Solvation Structure and Dynamics of Metal Ions in Ionic Liquids”. (The Journal of Physical Chemistry B)
- F. Rexhepi, et al. “Metal oxide solvation with ionic liquids: A solubility parameter analysis”. (Journal of Molecular Liquids)
- Tina Hilding. “Potential solvents identified for building on moon and Mars”. (Washington State University)
Written by Riri Aya
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