Extraction of Water from the Martian Atmosphere

摘要

We report on experiments to validate a concept for extracting water vapor from the Martian atmosphere byrnadsorption. The adsorber investigated is zeolite 3A, a synthetic molecular sieve that has a cage-like microstructurernwith an effective aperture of 3A. This micropore size allows water molecules to enter but excludes carbon dioxidernmolecules, which comprise 95% of the Martian atmosphere. Although the literature on zeolites is extensive, there isrnlittle information available on type 3A zeolite at Mars ambient conditions, i.e., temperatures of ~ 150-250 K and waterrnvapor pressures ranging from ~10~3 Pa to ~1 Pa. To obtain the desired adsorption data we developed a continuous flowrnMars environmental simulation facility capable of precisely generating and controlling for long durations the desiredrnpressures, temperatures, and humidities. The experiments conducted to date have produced measurements of thernmagnitudes and trends of the uptake kinetics and equilibrium capacity of a small-scale packed bed of zeolite 3A atrnconditions approaching those on Mars. Although the data obtained to date are preliminary, they show that zeolite 3A isrncapable of capturing significant quantities of water vapor at these conditions.