| Beneficiation An electrostatic ilmenite separator could process 15,000 to 20,000 tons of regolith per year working 10 hours a day, 150 days a year, and processing 10 to 12 tons of regolith per hour. It would amass about 0.6 tons per ton-hr. of regolith, or in this case about six to 7.2 tons. It would use 1.2 kW/ton of input mass or about 12 to 14.4 kilowatts of electricity. The electrostatic separator could output 100 kg. of ilmenite for every ton of input mass, or about one to 1.2 tons in this case (1). Thus, enough ilmenite could be extracted evey hour to make 320 to 384 kilograms of titanium. That's 480 tons to 576 tons of titanium every year from just six to 7.2 tons of beneficiation equipment upported to the Moon. Extraction The ilmenite must be reduced with hydrogen gas to yield water, titanium dioxide and iron. The water is electrolyzed to recover hydrogen and gain oxygen. Hydrogen leakage must be replenished by volatiles mining or ice mining in shadowed polar craters, if there really is ice in those craters and not just trapped hydrogen from the solar wind. A fluidized bed or numerous fluidized beds for the hydrogen reduction could be made on the Moon from blister steel made on the Moon. Stainless steel would be needed for these so that it doesn't rust. Until we develope methods of extracting chromite, probably by electrostatic separation, from mare soil, or find deep layers of chromite in central crater peak upthrusts, we must upport chromium for limited amounts of stainless steel for space applications like this. These fluidized beds would be rectangular because construction and welding will be easier that way. We will not have to roll steel into curved plates. We will simply pour out molten steel plates in shallow compacted regolith sand molds outvac and cover the steel with slag to prevent evaporation into the vacuum. Then weld them up and add webs in the corners for strength against internal pressure. We could make all pipes from blister steel and electrolysis units too on the Moon, though we might need to upport platinum electrodes for the water electrolysis units. Making electrostatic separation units on the Moon should be possible also, as these are not too complex for a clever mechanical engineer with some steel, some tools and some electricity to work with. The output from the hydrogen reduction fluidized beds ( H2 redux units) will be TiO2 and iron particles fused together. These will be ground, iron magnetically removed, and possibly treated with CO gas to form iron carbonyls to get the TiO2 purified. The TiO2 will them be reduced to titanium and oxygen in FFC cells upported to the Moon along with calcium chloride flux. Eventually we will have plenty of calcium and some chlorine from volcanic glass beads to make enough flux for the FFC cells. We might even mine enough carbon to make electrodes for FFC cells made on the Moon. |
| Titanium |
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| 1) H. H. Koelle "Pilot Production at the Moonbase 2015" pg. 11 <http://www.highfrontier.org/Archive/Jt/Koelle%20PILOT%20PRODUCTION%20at%20the%20 MOONBASE%202015.pdf> |
| David A. Dietzler, 2007 |
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