Food-Processing

Lunar Farm and Food Processing Plant
David Dietzler 2008

My colleague Mark Rode, MSME, has designed a 10' x 10' x 100' plain iron module with half inch thick walls and enforcing webs that can contain 3psi O2 with a five to one safety margin. Iron plates for these will be formed in shallow slab molds with iron from magma elctrolysis. Carbon dioxde levels will be elevated in crop modules to acclerate plant growth. LIght will come from heliostats that track the Sun. Heilostats might also telescope up and down so as not to block each other when the Sun is at a disavantageous angle.

Crops of wheat, corn, quinoa, oats, green vegetables and berry bushes will be grown on shelves in the iron modules to increase farm area. Also, livestock consisting of chickens, turkey, fish and goats will be raised. We should get two or three harvests per year. We could stagger the planting so crops come into season more frequently.

Food must be stored. In kitchens on the bottom floor of inflateables cooks will make up batches of food in bulk qty. and send it to the production line where workers and robots will place the food in canning jars that will then be heated in pressure cookers to sterilize or pasteurize them. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning

Cooks will whip up chilli, stew, soups, spaghetti, meat+macaroni+tomatoe sauce, and more. One foodstuff at a time will be sent to the line so no mistakes are made. Workers will also can meat, vegetables, beans and fruit. While fresh foods will be available at harvest times, food must be preserved for months while awaiting another harvest.

KItchens will have all the necessary gadgets from pots and pans to blenders, meat grinders, pasta noodle extruders, hand mixers, cookie makers, cup cake and muffin tins, refrigerators, electric stoves and ovens, dishwashing machines, microwaves, cutlery, electric knifes, meat slicers, plenty of recycled water and electric bug killers in case any bugs come in with the seeds.

Cooks will also bake fresh breads that will be sent to the line for workers to bag up in plastic bags that will be reused. All plastic will be reused and/or recycled. Upported plastic bread bag mass won't be to great. Lunans in habitat will have refrigerators to keep bread fresh. Corn flour, quinoa and oats will be packaged in paper bags made from hemp, rice hulls, peanut shells, etc. There will be peanut butter to go along with jellies.

Eggs will be available and these would be contained in reusable metal trays or "cartons." Goats milk will be boiled to make cheese and lower the fat content of the milk. The milk will be bottled and pasteurized in the pressure cookers at the end of the line.

Jars and bottles will require metal or glass lids and canning jars will require a lid with a rubber seal, but that upport mass won't be too great. We will need glass blowing machines to make the jars and bottles. A lid making machine is also necesary. All glass jars and bottles will be recycled and reused by washing them thouroghly so we need dish washing machines and detergent.

We will need to formulate glass with additions of sodium oxide and calcium oxide to lower its melting point and make it more easily worked than is pure silica.

Delivery trucks will haul foodstuffs to various locations.

Cooks will also prepare meals of meat, corn and green vegetables and these will be placed in aluminum tins to make TV dinners. Workers will appreciate that convenience. Electric ovens and possibly microwave overs will be availabe in the galley and mess hall. Even though we have a lot of precooked food it still has to be heated up again.

Livestock will be fed with the chaffe from crops-stems, leaves, husks, ground cobs, roots. We might have a worm farm and feed chopped worms to chickens. It is also possible to feed milk to chickens. Skins, entrails and ground up bones will go to the compost chamber along with livestock manure. Organic farming is most productive. We will mix the refuse with seived lunar soil and let it compost. Bacteria in the compost will break down the refuse and give off heat that sterilizes the filthy mass. Gases from the compost chamber will go thru an air purification system dedicated only to the smelly compost chamber. The other chambers will have mechanical air purification systems to assist the CO2 to O2 recycling ability of the crops and remove noxious gases like ammonia, methane and hydrogen sulfide of biological origin from the air. Humidity will be condensed from the air and water that flows out the bottom of the plant trays will be recaptured and reused. Plants transpire a lot of water vapor. Most of the water will be recycled in the farm or garden modules with some input from outside.

See: Life Support Systems and Lunar Food Supply

Canning will reduce refrigeration loads and reduce manfuacturing expense of producing refrigerators on the Moon for crew. Foods canned in jars don't have a metallic taste. It will be possible for crews to have a cabinet full of canned foods and just heat them up on a hot plate in their private cabins. Meals ready to eat.

But what about the energy load for the pressure cookers? We will use direct solar energy from heliostats to heat the water in the pressure cookers. Very efficient.

Food processing lines will not work constantly but only around harvest times, twice of more yearly. Crews will harvest the crops largely by hand and move the stuff to the kitchens where the people who do the best cooking will get to work with multi-gallon sized pots and big frying pans. There will be spices, perhaps grown in pots in private cabins and social centers with spice gardens for aesthetics as well as food flavoring.

Others will man the conveyor belt with some people ladeling the food thru funnels into jars and others screwing the lids on and others manning the solar heated pressure cookers.

Some will do clean up activities like sweeping and mopping the floors and loading the dish washers. And the gutsiest will do the slaughtering and cleaning of livestock.

Overall, this will be a community activity.

This image is stretched vertically. One 10' x 10' x 100' module will make quite a garden.
There will be a wide variety of foods. A 2.5' aisle down the middle of the module allows access to the garden/farm for seeding, weeding, pruning, spraying and picking. There should be a pumpkin patch and sweet potatoes. And pineapples. Some sugarcane too.