Crushing Martian Regolith Simulant for In-Situ Water Extraction Final Presentation Nick Sestito & Christopher Graham Interdisciplinary member: Ian Kaplan (CE) November 30 th, 2015

Project Introduction Eventual colonization of Mars A primary necessity is water  Feedstock Requirement  Return Rocket Propellant  Consumables  Etc. Old Dominion RASC-AL 2015 group  Branching from their excavation proposal  Extraction from Surface Regolith

Project Introduction Mars Odyssey Orbiter data:  Substantial surface water content  12-44% water content (by weight)  Northern Martian hemisphere

Project Introduction Project Goal:  Determine an optimal crushed grain size  Develop preliminary hardware designs  Propose a Crushing process  Estimate overall process power consumption

Power Constraints RAPID-L Reactor  Micro nuclear reactor prototype  Created for Mars and moon colonization  Proposed by previous semester Relative Specifications  200 kW electrical power  5 MW thermal power (waste heat)

Determining an Optimal Output Grain Size Thermal Model to determine optimal size  Increasing total surface area of each grain Employing a Hot CO2 oven to extract water  Mars atmosphere: 95% Carbon Dioxide  Heat regolith grains past boiling point of water

Thermal Model Forced convection – Lumped system approach  Temp CO2=600K  Initial Regolith grain Temp: 200 K  Final regolith grain Temp: 375 K  System Pressure: 100 kPa Heating Schematic

Thermal Model Results of the thermal model:  regolith grains sizes 1mm-5mm diameter  Realistic pipe length and diameter Power Consumption of the thermal model  Roughly 20 Watts consumption  For all grain sizes 1mm – 5 mm Assumed Heating source is RAPID-L  20 Watts from available 5 MW

Thermal Model Results

Crusher Type Selection Many types of crushers with differing reduction ratios  Jaw Crusher  Cone Crusher  Hammer Mill Most designed for Industrial Use  Weight measured in tons  “Portable” crushers often are towed around  Hourly processing Rate often in tons per hour This exceeds the needs and criteria of our mars application

Lab Crushers Few crushers are small in size  Jeweler Equipment for exposing gems  Lab equipment  Food Processors Lab crushers proved to be ideal base point  Designed for crushing common gravel through granite  Small size and light weight  Lower power consumption  Regolith processing rate in scale of project demands.  Exist Primarily as Jaw Crushers

Bico Jaw Crushers 2 Models that Function in our ideal set up  Chipmunk Jaw Crusher  3hp, feed size x10.16cm  Output size (longest dimension) 1.6mm Badger Jaw Crusher  5 hp  Feed size 12.7x17.78cm  Output size 3mm Chipmunk gets below 2mm range, but cant accept 10x10x10 cubes Badger can handle 10x10x10 cubes and produces out 3 mm grains

Stress Analysis Compressive Strength for ice (-50 deg C)  50 Mpa Stress Analysis done in MSC-PATRAN/NASTRAN  Input size: 10 cubic cm  Output size: 1-5 mm in diameter Modeled as a cantilever beam Fixed to non-moving jaw Force applied as distributed load from movable jaw

Stress Analysis Results Distributed Load:  5*10^4 N/m Resultant Force  1100 lbs Von Mises Stress  Yellow – 50 Mpa  Red – 60 MPa

Jaw Crusher Power Estimate Basis for Estimation from Chipmunk Jaw Crusher  Motor: 400 rmp From image scaling  Eccentric shaft:  90 rpm  4 inch diameter From image scaling  Eccentric shaft:  90 rpm  18 inch diameter

Jaw Crusher Power Estimate Torque throughout the shaft  τ=1100 lbsf*42 in=2200 lbsf i Power=torque*angular velocity  P=2200 lb-in * 90 rot/min ≈1700 lb-ft/sec  1700 lb-ft/sec= 3.09 hp ≈3 hp Factor of safety  S.F. = 2.0  Power = 6.0 hp

Summarization Water source: surface excavation Input regolith size: 10 cubic cm Output regolith size range: 1-5 mm diameter Crushing method: Customized-geometry jaw crusher Mechanical power estimation: 6 horsepower

Gantt Chart