Browsing by Author "Woolever, Mitchell"
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Item Ionic Liquid Parameter Prediction Leveraging Quantum Structure Property Relationships(2023 International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2023-07-16) Woolever, Mitchell; Nabity, James; Cook, Ronald; Fox, EricU.S. Space Exploration Policy denotes the critical importance of establishing an outpost on the Moon to provide the foundation for human missions beyond cislunar space. However, launching spare components and systems from Earth will likely be cost prohibitive, so the single most important development that is required for enhancing, and in some cases enabling, sustained human presence on the Lunar surface is having the capability to extract metals, oxygen, and water from the Lunar regolith. Ionic Liquids (ILs) are noteworthy for their host of unique chemical properties: a relatively large temperature range in the liquid phase, negligible vapor pressures, thermal and chemical stability, wide voltage window, and many have low toxicity. Furthermore, their coupled organic and ionic nature make them excellent solvents for a wide range of materials. In particular, acidic ionic liquids show the potential to enhance oxygen and metals production from regolith via dissolution and electrolysis. Furthermore, given their organic composition, the physical and chemical properties of ILs can be fine-tuned by modifying their ion structures and combination. Relative abundance changes with sample location, but the principal metals of interest for In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) in the Lunar regolith are iron, aluminum, magnesium, calcium, and titanium. However, an IL has yet to be identified that reliably dissolves titanium dioxide or silicon dioxide. Manufacturing and testing even a relatively small subset of the million theoretically stable IL anion/cation combinations for mineral digestion performance analysis is time and cost prohibitive. This paper will discuss a software process pipeline and corresponding analysis setpoints for a method to determine quantum structure property relationships (QSPR), which relate IL molecular structure to chemical function. Using QSPR, hundreds or even thousands of ILs could be assessed for efficacy in regolith ISRU and beyond.Item Ionic Liquids for a Regenerable Carbon Formation Reactor: Reactor Design Study and Ionic Liquid Parameterization(2023 International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2023-07-16) Oliver-Butler, Kaitlin; Woolever, MitchellFor oxygen recovery, the Bosch process holds the promise of theoretical complete oxygen and process hydrogen recovery, and it is a subject of interest for air revitalization systems for travel beyond low-earth orbit. However, the Bosch process generates a solid carbon product that causes issues with pressure and interferes with the catalyst; dealing with the carbon and renewing the catalyst poses high up-mass or resupply needs for any Bosch reactor, making it unfeasible at its current state of development. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has studied the use of ionic liquids (IL) to renew the catalyst required by the reactor to address the issue of high resupply need. An ionic liquid can be used to digest catalyst material out of the carbon fouling and then electroplate it onto a substrate, which would then be ready for use in another carbon formation reaction. This cycle can then be repeated as necessary, ideally within a single reactor. Towards this end, this conference paper reviews prior proof-of-concept work completed by MSFC, and then it defines the reactor design problem for a single reactor that can be used for both carbon formation reactions and ionic liquid-based catalyst renewal. IL selection considerations are detailed. Empirical parameterization studies on the selected IL are presented with discussion on how it informs design choices and creates tradeoffs. This paper concludes with a discussion on challenges in reactor design and an outline of future work.