| National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) |
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) — Chemical Conversion for In Situ Resource Utilization for Propellant Production.
The NASA In Situ Resource Utilization program is exploring scenarios for using indigenous resources in space to produce a variety of valuable products to support propulsion, power systems, environmental control and life support, science activities, and even commercialization of space. The rationale is that the use of indigenous resources can reduce the size and weight of the payloads from Earth significantly, representing enormous cost savings, and makes the continued exploration of space economically viable. One project NASA is actively pursuing is the Martian in situ propellant production plant, whereby carbon dioxide and possibly water is obtained from the Martian environment and chemically converted to propellants, oxygen, and other useful chemicals. Microreactor technology provides an opportunity to dramatically reduce the size and weight of chemical processing hardware for space applications. We have been developing and testing microchannel components and subsystems that will result in a breadboard demonstration system for an in situ propellant production plant based on microtechnology. This plant must first collect and compress carbon dioxide from Martian atmospheric conditions, react the CO2 with hydrogen to make methane and water, and finally separate and purify products and recycle streams. Development efforts have included microchannel absorption and adsorption technology for thermochemical compression of CO2, microchannel Sabatier and reverse water-gas shift reactors, heat exchangers, and chemical separation technologies.
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