A novel concept for extraction of water from the Mars soil in a real-time, open-air process was demonstrated in a Mars environment chamber. The concept breadboard uses radiative heating to bake off water from exposed soil contained in a bin. An enclosure, intended to mimic the bottom of a rover, covers the bin. A fan continuously blows the Mars atmospheric gases through the enclosure to collect the evolved water while a tiller was used to churn up moist subsurface soil. These initial tests verified concept feasibility. The sweep gas generated by commercially available muffin fans at 7 Torr was sufficient to transfer water vapor into a condenser flow loop. The radiative heating, while non-optimized, heated the soil surface to 60 C to generate water vapor. A rototiller working through the soil bin brought sufficient amounts of new moist soil to the heated surface to show an increase in rate of water extraction.
Extraction and Capture of Water from Martian Regolith Experimental Proof-of-Concept
AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition ; 2016 ; San Diego, CA, United States
2016-01-04
Conference paper
No indication
English
Extraction and Capture of Water from Martian Regolith Experimental Proof-of-Concept (AIAA 2016-0226)
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2016
|Mining the Martian Regolith for Water
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2000
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