Experiments on Parabolic Flight Test Oxygen-Evolving Electrolysis

Researchers have carried out experiments on a parabolic flight to examine the efficiency of oxygen-evolving electrolysis on the Moon and Mars.

The discovery from the Universities of Manchester and Glasgow is stated to supply beneficial insights into establishing human habitats far from Earth.

Electrolysis can be utilized to extract oxygen out of lunar rocks or to divide water into hydrogen and oxygen. This can be helpful for life support systems and in-situ manufacturing of rocket propellants.

Smaller gravitational fields on the Moon (1/6th of Earth’s gravity) and Mars (1/3rd of Earth’s gravity) and their impact on gas-evolving electrolysis compared to conditions on Earth have not been examined carefully. Lower gravity can substantially influence electrolysis efficiency, as bubbles can remain stuck to electrode surfaces and create a resistive layer.

Parabolic flight experiments

A new study released in Nature Communications demonstrates how the scientists embarked on experiments to determine how the possibly life-sustaining electrolysis method acted in reduced gravity conditions.

In a statement, lead engineer, Gunter Just, stated: “We designed and constructed a small centrifuge that can generate a series of gravity levels relevant to the Moon and Mars, and operated it during microgravity on a parabolic flight, to get rid of the influence of Earth’s gravity. When doing an experiment in the laboratory, you can not get away from the gravity of Earth; in the virtually zero-g background in the airplane, nevertheless, our electrolysis cells were just affected by the centrifugal force. Therefore, we could tune the gravity level of each experiment by transforming the rotation speed.

” The centrifuge had 4 25cm arms that each held an electrolysis cell outfitted with a variety of sensors, so amid each parabola of around 18 seconds, we did four concurrent experiments on the spinning system.

” We likewise operated the very same experiments on the centrifuge in between 1 and 8g in the laboratory. In this configuration, we had the arms swinging to represent the downwards gravity. It was discovered that the trend observed below 1g followed the trend over 1g, which experimentally confirmed that high gravity platforms can be utilized to predict electrolysis behavior in lunar gravity, eliminating the limitations of requiring costly and complex microgravity conditions. In our system, we discovered that 11 percent less oxygen was generated in lunar gravity if the very same operating parameters were utilized as on Earth.”

According to Manchester University, the additional power demand was far more modest at around one percent. These specific worths are only appropriate to the small test cell yet demonstrate that the minimized efficiency in low gravity environments should be considered when planning power budgets or product output for a system operating on the Moon or Mars.

Suppose the effect on power or product output was deemed too large for a system to function appropriately. In that case, some adaptations could be made that might decrease the result of gravity, such as utilizing a specially structured electrode surface or introducing flow or stirring.

Read the original article on The Engineer.

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