Making oxygen with magnets could help astronauts breathe easy

A University of Warwick chemist is one of the scientists who have proposed a better way to make oxygen in space.

New research on magnetic phase separation in microgravity was published by researchers from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, University of Colorado Boulder and Freie Universitt Berlin.

It is a complicated and costly process to keep astronauts on the International Space Station. Future missions to the moon or Mars will need better technology.

lvaro Romero-Calvo is a recent graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder. It wouldn't make sense to use the same architecture on a trip to Mars, according to an analysis done by a researcher at NASA Ames.

Efficient phase separation is an obstacle for human space exploration and has been known since the first flights to space in the 1960s. This phenomenon is a particular challenge for the life support system onboard the International Space Station as oxygen for the crew is produced in water electrolyzer systems.

There is an underlying problem.

A glass of soda is what you would imagine. In the absence of gravity, the bubbles of CO 2 can't float to the top. They stayed in the liquid.

The machines used by NASA to force gasses out are large and require a lot of maintenance. Experiments have shown that magnets can achieve the same results in some instances.

Although diamagnetic forces are well known and understood, their use by engineers in space applications have not been fully explored because of gravity.

TheZARM is located in Germany. Brinkert, who has ongoing research funded by the GermanAerospace Center, led the team in successful experimental tests at a special drop tower.

The groups have developed a procedure to remove gas bubbles from the surface of the electrodes. For the first time, gas bubbles can be attracted to and repelled from by a simple neodymium magnet in microgravity.

Oxygen systems and other space research involving liquid-to-gas phase changes could be opened up by the research.

Dr. Brinkert suggests that hydrogen production in water and efficient oxygen can be achieved even in the near future.

"After years of analytical and computational research, being able to use this amazing drop tower in Germany provided concrete proof that this concept will function in the zero-g space environment."

More information: Álvaro Romero-Calvo et al, Magnetic phase separation in microgravity, npj Microgravity (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41526-022-00212-9 Citation: Making oxygen with magnets could help astronauts breathe easy (2022, August 12) retrieved 13 August 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-08-oxygen-magnets-astronauts-easy.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.