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.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Extraction and Capture of Water from Martian Regolith Experimental Proof-of-Concept


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition ; 2016 ; San Diego, CA, United States


    Publication date :

    2016-01-04


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English





    Extraction and Capture of Water from Martian Regolith Experimental Proof-of-Concept (AIAA 2016-0226)

    Linne, Diane L. / Kleinhenz, Julie E. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2016




    Mining the Martian Regolith for Water

    Duke, M. B. / Knudsen, C. W. / Gibson, M. A. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2000