Faculty of Engineering, Shizuoka University
Graduate School, Shizuoka University
Tokyo Metropolitan College of Industrial Technology
Faculty of Engineering, Shizuoka University
Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo
Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
出版者
宇宙航空研究開発機構宇宙科学研究所(JAXA)(ISAS)
出版者（英）
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)(ISAS)
The Space Energy Symposium (March 1, 2013. Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)(ISAS)), Sagamihara, Kanagawa Japan
抄録（英）
For construction of a lunar base, huge amounts of building supplies are necessary. However, since it costs too much to bring all building supplies from the earth, it is desirable to use lunar resources for the construction. The surface of the lunar is covered with regolith. The regolith is sand of many kinds of metallic oxide such as SiO2, Al2O3, CaO, MgO, FeO etc. Then, we can get metallic building supplies by reducing the regolith. The conventional electrolysis method (i.e., the Hall-Heroult process) is widely used in industry, but it is not suitable for application on the moon, as it requires carbon electrodes as the reducing agent, which does not exist on the lunar surface. In this study, we employed a laser plasma wind tunnel to reduce Al2O3. The use of stationary plasma for alumina reduction enables a higher processing capacity than direct heating by a focused laser beam. As a reducing agent, hydrogen is mixed with the working gas of argon because the hydrogen derived from solar wind exists on the lunar surface. The system consists of three parts, which are involved in thermal dissociation, frozen flow and Al collection. First, the Al2O3 powder was fed into the laser-sustained plasma at atmospheric pressure. The produced Al was accelerated to supersonic speeds by a convergent-divergent nozzle to prevent Al from recombining with oxygen. From the Al and argon line distributions in the flow direction, it was found that Al remained in the dissociated state. A water-cooled copper tube was inserted in the flow to collect Al. X-ray analysis indicated that elemental Al was observed on the surface of the tube. The maximum value of the estimated reduction efficiency was 5.5 %.
内容記述
形態: カラー図版あり
形態: PDF
内容記述（英）
Physical characteristics: Original contains color illustrations
Physical characteristics: PDF
月資源利用のためのレーザープラズマを用いた金属酸化物還元法の基礎研究
61912019.pdf
(561.69KB)
