2024/08/09 by Kosuke Ikeya, Ikeya, Kosuke, Francisco J. Guerrero-Gonzalez +11 · 1 citation
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Chemistry · Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrobiology #Carbothermic reaction #Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph) #Chemistry #Chromatography #Engineering #Environmental science #Extraction (chemistry) #FOS: Electrical engineering #FOS: Physical sciences #Light effects on plants #Materials science #Mathematics #Metallurgy #Physics #Planetary Science and Exploration #Pulp and paper industry #Reduction (mathematics) #Spacecraft and Cryogenic Technologies #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · open access · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2408.04936
published in elib (German Aerospace Center) (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR))
openalex publication_date 2024/08/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
To establish a self-sustained human presence in space and to explore deeper into the solar system, extensive research has been conducted on In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) systems. Past studies have proposed and researched many technologies to produce oxygen from regolith, such as carbothermal reduction and water extraction from icy regolith, to utilize it for astronauts' life support and as the propellant of space systems. However, determining the most promising technology remains challenging due to uncertainties in the lunar environment and processing methods. To better understand the lunar environment and ISRU operations, it is crucial to gather more information. Motivated by this need for information gathering, this paper proposes a new ISRU plant architecture integrating carbothermal reduction of dry regolith and water extraction from icy regolith. Two different hybrid plant architectures integrating both technologies (1) in parallel and (2) in series are examined. The former involves mining and processing in both a Permanently Shadowed Region (PSR) and a peak of eternal light in parallel, while the latter solely mines in a PSR. In this series hybrid architecture, the dry regolith tailings from water extraction are further processed by carbothermal reduction. This paper conducts a comparative analysis of the landed mass and required power of each plant architecture utilizing subsystem-level models. Furthermore, based on uncertain parameters such as resource content in regolith, the potential performance range of each plant was discovered through Monte Carlo simulations. The result indicates the benefit of the series hybrid architecture in terms of regolith excavation rate, while its mass cost seems the highest among the studied architectures.