Lunar Mining

Lunar Mining Links

Oxygen production on the Moon: Processes for different feedstocks

Lunar Mining of Silicate using electrolysis. This process technically produces Aluminum, however most of the aluminum is used to produce more Silicon. It is also worth noting that the paper states that as of writing (1993) there was still uncertainty whether Calcium Electrolysis was viable.

graph TD;

subgraph Outputs
Si{Si}
O2{O2}
Al{Al}
Co{Co}
end

subgraph Process
a[Anorthositic Lunar Soil] --> b[Magnetic Separation]
d --> e[Calcium Electrolysis]
b -- Anorthosite CaSi2Al2O3 --> c[Reduction by Aluminum]
c --> d[Aluminum Electrolysis]
end

c --> Si

d-->Al & O2

Al -- Aluminum is Recycled to Produce Si--> c
e --> Co & O2

Development of the Moon

Great resource for Lunar composition.

Suggests that Oxygen will be the main focus of all resource extraction.

Lunar resources: A review

Great resource for Lunar composition. Not much info on mining or resource extraction.

Review of Techniques for In-Situ Oxygen Extraction on the Moon

$$E_{\text{total}}=\frac{1}{\eta }(E_{\text{water}}+E_{\text{regolith}}+E_{\text{cooling}}+E_{\text{electrolysis}})$$

Where is the total energy required to obtain 1 kg of oxygen, is the efficiency of the 𝐸𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝜂
heating system, is the energy required to heat, melt and vaporise 1 kg of water, 𝐸𝑤𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝐸𝑟𝑒𝑔𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡ℎ
is the energy required to heat the regolith that contains 1 kg of water (at 5.6±2.9 kg per 𝐻2𝑂
100 kg Regolith), is the energy required to power pumps for a radiative cooling system 𝐸𝑐𝑜𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔
that condenses the water and is the energy required to separate water into oxygen 𝐸𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑦𝑠𝑖𝑠
and hydrogen. The heating efficiency is conservatively estimated to be 90 % due to losses for
the reactor and the evaporation of other volatiles.

Using the above info, 1 kg of Oxygen would cost 1 kWh