The case forin situresource utilisation for oxygen production on Mars by non-equilibrium plasmas

Abstract

Herein, it is argued that Mars has nearly ideal conditions for CO 2 decomposition by nonequilibrium plasmas. It is shown that the pressure and temperature ranges in the 96% CO 2 Martian atmosphere favour the vibrational excitation and subsequent up-pumping of the asymmetric stretching mode, which is believed to be a key factor for an efficient plasma dissociation, at the expense of the excitation of the other modes. Therefore, gas discharges operating at atmospheric pressure on Mars are extremely strong candidates to produce O 2 efficiently from the locally available resources.

Living on mars: how to produce oxygen and fuel to get home

“…A radically different and new approach to the question, proposed very recently, would be to use low-temperature plasmas [2]. The new results were obtained by simulations made at the N-PRIME team of IPFN (Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal) [2,7] and are supported by experiments made at LPP (Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France) and TU/e (Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands) in pulsed DC plasmas [8]. This early research focuses on the characterization and control of the degree of vibrational excitation, crucial to achieve an efficient plasma decomposition of CO 2 .…”

Vibrational Kinetics in Plasma as a Functional Problem: A Flux-Matching Approach

“…10 Even more recent is the idea of using CO2 plasma reactors to produce oxygen from CO2 in Mars colonization scenarios. 11…”

Oxygen Generation by Carbon Dioxide Glow Discharge and Separation by Permeation Through Ultrathin Silver Membranes

“…These include (a) reducing membrane thicknesses another order of magnitude using W mesh‐reinforced Ag foils 2.5 μm thick, (b) microporous substrates on which a pin hole free thin film of Ag would serve as the membrane (<1‐μm thickness), (c) adapting planar plasma glow discharge technology for reductions in voltage enabled by micrometer‐scale electrode gaps (Go & Pohlman, ), and (d) exploring pulsed power plasma techniques under development at the University of Lisbon. Pulsed power plasmas will be applicable to this approach to further reduce the energy budget (Guerra et al, ). Pulse widths 5 ms on and off to create plasmas that are more efficient in dissociating CO 2 have been reported (Silva et al, ).…”