Chinese researchers say they’ve devised a new way to extract water from lunar soil and convert it into fuel.
As detailed in a new paper published today in the journal Joule, the team found that their proposed “photothermal strategy” — essentially converting light into heat — could effectively convert carbon dioxide from extracted water into carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and oxygen gas, a “potential route for sustaining human life on the Moon and enabling long-term extraterrestrial exploration.”
“The sustainable utilization of local resources is essential for long-term human survival on the Moon and beyond,” the researchers write, pointing out that bringing water from Earth is cost-prohibitive at roughly $83,000 per gallon.
“We never fully imagined the ‘magic’ that the lunar soil possessed,” said Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen professor and coauthor Lu Wang in a statement.
“The biggest surprise for us was the tangible success of this integrated approach,” he added. “The one-step integration of lunar H2O extraction and photothermal CO2 catalysis could enhance energy utilization efficiency and decrease the cost and complexity of infrastructure development.”
While plenty of questions remain about our future efforts to harness local resources on the surface of the Moon, it’s a glimmer of hope that humanity could indeed establish a more permanent and potentially sustainable presence there.
For their research, the team focused on simplifying existing proposals for how to extract water from lunar regolith, which tend to be energy-intensive and stop short of breaking the water down into its usable elements.
The researchers also propose using the extracted water to turn carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts into carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas, which could be used to make fuels.
The team tested their photothermal approach on actual Moon samples gathered during China’s Chang’E-5 mission, which launched in November 2020, and collected samples from the northwest of the Moon’s near side before returning to Earth.
While their lab-based experiments turned out to be a success, the actual lunar surface will likely prove a far more challenging place to extract and convert lunar water. As the paper points out, radiation, low gravity, and extreme temperature fluctuations could complicate matters significantly.
However, the advancements highlight how far the Chinese space program has come in a matter of years. A mere two decades ago, China was a distant underdog in the international space race. But now that the country is launching its own astronauts to space while the Trump administration is effectively looking to eviscerate NASA when it comes to space science, China could stand a chance to surpass the US in its plans to build a Moon base by 2035.
More on extracting lunar water: Chinese Scientists Extract Water From Lunar Soil