System for extracting water from lunar regolith and associated method
AssigneeUniversity of Central Florida Research Foundation, Inc.
InventorPhilip Metzger
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The system extracts water from lunar regolith and includes a regolith intake having a digging bucket that collects lunar regolith soil and a gravel separator that separates and discharges gravel and passes a mixture of ice-regolith powder having ice grains that are about 10-100 microns along the conveyor. A pneumatic separator receives the ice-regolith powder and pneumatically splits the ice-regolith powder into streams of different sized lithic fragments and ice particles per the ratio of inertial force and aerodynamic drag force of the lithic fragments and ice particles. Each split stream may include a magnetic separator that separates further the magnetic and paramagnetic lithic fragments from ice particles to discharge up to 80 percent of lithic fragments to slag.
Claims20
A system for extracting water from lunar regolith, comprising:
- a regolith intake configured to collect lunar regolith and separate and discharge gravel and pass a mixture of ice-regolith powder;
- a heater configured to heat the ice-regolith powder and vaporize any layer of ice in at least a continuous, non-filling ice-regolith relationship;
- and
- a pneumatic separator configured to receive the ice-regolith powder and pneumatically split the ice-regolith powder into split streams of different sized lithic fragments and ice particles per the ratio of inertial force and aerodynamic drag force of the lithic fragments and ice particles.
A system for extracting water from regolith, comprising:
- a regolith intake configured to collect regolith and separate and discharge gravel and pass a mixture of ice-regolith powder;
- a heater configured to heat the ice-regolith powder and vaporize any layer of ice in at least a continuous, non-filling ice-regolith relationship;
- a pneumatic separator configured to receive the ice-regolith powder and pneumatically split the ice-regolith powder into split streams of different sized lithic fragments and ice particles per the ratio of inertial force and aerodynamic drag force of the lithic fragments and ice particles;
- and
- each of the split streams having a tribocharger/electrostatic separator configured to multiply the acceleration of ice particles versus lithic fragments to aid in ice particles separation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.