What happened to just scrubbing the carbon from CO2 using lithium hydroxide?
What happened to just scrubbing the carbon from CO2 using lithium hydroxide?
With the planning of long-term missions to the Moon and Mars, humanity is increasingly faced with the question of providing astronauts with oxygen for breathing. Right now, keeping people breathing on board space stations is a complex and expensive process, so future travel in the cosmic abyss will require more advanced technologies.
International Space Station (ISS) — one of the largest and most expensive projects in the history of mankind. For almost a quarter of a century, it has been orbiting our planet, and all this time scientists and technicians have to solve many problems in order to maintain the life and health of the people inside.
During the day, the ISS crew consumes from 2.5 to nine kilograms of oxygen — a vital gas necessary for human breathing. Today, the main method of generating it in space is water electrolysis: under the influence of an electric current, a water molecule breaks down into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen.
The process is not cheap: not only does electrolysis waste precious electricity, but there is also the problem of efficient separation of phases (liquid, water and gas), which has been facing humanity since the first flights into space in the 1960s.
To imagine what it is, imagine a glass of soda. On Earth, carbon dioxide bubbles float up and leave the glass, but on board the ISS, in microgravity conditions, the bubbles will remain suspended in the liquid.
Now, to separate oxygen bubbles from water "soda", the ISS uses massive centrifuges that take up a lot of space and require a lot of energy: to use them when going on a long — distance space flight, and even in the opposite direction from the Sun, is to risk being left without electricity at all.
But now, it seems that an international team of scientists from the United States and Germany has found a possible way to solve this technological snag. They developed a way to effectively separate the liquid and gas phases in microgravity using magnets.
In Germany, on a special installation calledAt the Bremen Microgravity Tower, scientists conducted an experiment in conditions that mimic near-Earth microgravity. It turned out that gas bubbles can "attract" and "repel" a neodymium magnet if it is immersed in solutions of different composition (for example, pure water or a solution of manganese sulfate).
In the future, this technology can be used to develop new oxygen systems and provide hydrogen fuel to the engines of ships that will carry the first people on long-distance space flights. Such magnets can also be used on Earth, for example, for cleaning wastewater or polluted air.
With the planning of long-term missions to the Moon and Mars, humanity is increasingly faced with the question of providing astronauts with oxygen for breathing. Right now, keeping people breathing on board space stations is a complex and expensive process, so future travel in the cosmic abyss will require more advanced technologies.
International Space Station (ISS) — one of the largest and most expensive projects in the history of mankind. For almost a quarter of a century, it has been orbiting our planet, and all this time scientists and technicians have to solve many problems in order to maintain the life and health of the people inside.
During the day, the ISS crew consumes from 2.5 to nine kilograms of oxygen — a vital gas necessary for human breathing. Today, the main method of generating it in space is water electrolysis: under the influence of an electric current, a water molecule breaks down into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen.
The process is not cheap: not only does electrolysis waste precious electricity, but there is also the problem of efficient separation of phases (liquid, water and gas), which has been facing humanity since the first flights into space in the 1960s.
To imagine what it is, imagine a glass of soda. On Earth, carbon dioxide bubbles float up and leave the glass, but on board the ISS, in microgravity conditions, the bubbles will remain suspended in the liquid.
Now, to separate oxygen bubbles from water "soda", the ISS uses massive centrifuges that take up a lot of space and require a lot of energy: to use them when going on a long — distance space flight, and even in the opposite direction from the Sun, is to risk being left without electricity at all.
But now, it seems that an international team of scientists from the United States and Germany has found a possible way to solve this technological snag. They developed a way to effectively separate the liquid and gas phases in microgravity using magnets.
In Germany, on a special installation calledAt the Bremen Microgravity Tower, scientists conducted an experiment in conditions that mimic near-Earth microgravity. It turned out that gas bubbles can "attract" and "repel" a neodymium magnet if it is immersed in solutions of different composition (for example, pure water or a solution of manganese sulfate).
In the future, this technology can be used to develop new oxygen systems and provide hydrogen fuel to the engines of ships that will carry the first people on long-distance space flights. Such magnets can also be used on Earth, for example, for cleaning wastewater or polluted air.
https://vpk.name/news/623317_novyi_sposob_polucheniya_kisloroda_pomozhet_oblegchit_zhizn_kosmonavtam.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-022-00212-9#Sec2
(post is archived)