RE: ESA to begin producing oxygen from LUNAR DUST

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ESA to begin producing oxygen from LUNAR DUST

in oxygen •  5 years ago 

Great article! I love it.

Allow me to be the miracle maker. The process is actually very simple.
Metal oxides (presumably from meteorites) are made from metal and oxygen.
Very similar to the rust found here on earth.

The aluminum foil in your kitchen is coated with a thin layer of aluminum oxide.
If this is heated to a high enough temperature, the oxygen is released back into the air and the layer remaining is pure aluminum again.

The same can be done with common rust to recover the iron and other metals.

By encapsulating the metals in molten salt, oxides are prevented from reforming as the metals cool, resulting in relatively pure alloys.

These alloys can be further refined to extract each individual metal.

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