| LUNAR COBALT and NICKEL |
| Free iron fines in regolith are easily removed with magnets. Free iron fines are 0.5% by weight of regolith according to Phinney et al. That's half a ton per 100 tons and five tons per 1000 tons. Other sources state 0.15% or 1.5 tons per thousand tons regolith. The free iron fines, that are of meteroric origin, are 5% nickel and 0.2% cobalt. That's 5 tons of nickel per 100 tons of iron and 200 kg. of cobalt at 100% recovery. From 1000 tons of iron fines we could get 50 tons of nickel and 2 tons of cobalt. Nickel and cobalt can easily be extracted by treating the iron fines with carbon monoxide gas at moderate temps. of 50 C. to 75 C. to form gaseous carbonlys that can then be distilled. Then the carbonyls are heated to 175 to 250 deg. C. to break them down into the metals and the CO gas is released and reused. Fairly simple equipment to do this would be upported to the Moon. Bascially just a metal pressure tank with heating that the iron fines are reacted in with CO gas and fractional distillation towers. One ounce of cobalt can neutralize the yellow tint of iron in one ton of glass. Five oz. cobalt per ton of glass can tint glass blue. Deep blue can be obtained by adding only ten pounds of cobalt to a ton of glass. Perhaps we will make deep blue bottles for brandy and deep blue glass dinner ware. Black cast basalt bottles can contain bottled water and milk. Glass tinted brown and green with iron can contain other beverages. There are more important uses for cobalt and nickel. Nickel makes steel very strong. Cobalt prevents creep. They also raise the temperatures that steel can work at. Nickel based AISI 600 series superalloys that are good for service at 1000 F.+ could be made. Chromium will be needed to make these alloys. Until we can tap lunar chromium in the form of chromite traces in mare basalt or even discover deep layers of chormite we must upport some chromium to make these alloys. Lined with a refractory like TiO2 (m.p. 1900-2000 C.) made on the Moon from ilmenite, Ni based superalloy tuyeres, off gas pipes; iron, steel and slag draining pipes for steel fluxing/cleaning furnaces and even carbon monoxide direct ore reduction furnaces will hold up without complex active cooling systems on the waterless Moon. Perhaps simple passive cooling with large fins coated with thin cast basalt tiles (it's black therefore a good emitter) will be added to superalloy pipes conveying molten metals and hot gases to reduce thermal stress loads and improve superalloyl pipe lifetimes. After extraction of nickel and cobalt from iron fines, the iron fines will be melted and carburized to make plain carbon steel, the most common type of steel. Smaller amounts of alloy steels will be made with nickel and cobalt for high temperature applications. |
| more information about tinting glass. See: http://www.glassencyclopedia.com/cobaltglass.html |
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| more information about making steel on the Moon from iron fines, see: Blister Steel |
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| A very basic diagram of a device for separating nickel and cobalt from lunar iron fines. Nickel is extracted commericially by treating ores with hot CO gas to form gaseous carbonyls that are then condensed and decomposed with heat. This commercial process is called the Mond process. Iron carbonyl Fe(CO)5 bp 103 C. Nickel carbonyl Ni(CO)4 bp ~40 C. Cobalt carbonyl bp > 100 C. While the nickel and cobalt is used for steel alloys, the iron carbonyl could be used for CVD manufacturing processes. |
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| A similar device might be used to separate iron from TiO2 in the slag from H2 redux of ilmenite. TiO2 makes a hi temp ceramic (m.p. 1900-2000 C.). Could CO gas "carbonylize" the surface iron blebs and even penetrate the TiO2 grains thru pores and cracks to get at inner iron blebs that would form gaseous carbonyls and vaporize out of the TiO2 grains? Perhaps mechanical grinding would help. The purified TiO2 grains could be run thru FFC cells to get sponge titanium. Perhaps residual iron could be hammered out of the sponge Ti metal. Or would a small amount of iron in the titanium make a decent alloy, perhaps with additions of aluminum? We don't have enough vanadium on the Moon to make the workhorse titanium alloy Ti-Al6-V4, so we must find other alloying elements. |
| interestingly enough, the most common steel alloying elements are all near each other on the periodic table indicating that they have similar physical and chemical properties. Note the position of titanium. And the ferromagnetic elements Fe, Co and Ni. We have very little vanadium, chromium, manganese, zirconium, niobium and molybdenum on the Moon thus extraction will be difficult. Electrostatics? Bioleaching? We could upport some vanadium since we won't need a lot for drill bits and hack saw blades. We must look at alloys of iron with cobalt, nickel and titanium; also a little silicon. We must look at alloys of titanium with iron, cobalt, nickel and a little aluminum. Much research remains to be done for the full exploitation of limited lunar materials available. No copper, but calcium is a better conductor and in the vacuum it will not burn. Things are much different on Luna where sedimentary and biological processes never existed, but there are resources of free vacuum, solar energy, super cold and low gravity that can be taken advantage of (IE the volatilization and separation of oxides from thermally decomposed minerals at relatively low temps thanks to the vacuum. We must also learn how to heat treat and temper steels on the Moon. Microwave or induction heating and rapid cooling in molten salt baths or with blasts of helium gas will produce hardened martensitic alloys. Slow cooling and annealing and formation of austentitic alloys can be achieved by MW or induction heating followed by covering the steel with regolith or vermiculites made by steaming regolith. If new alloys are formulated on the Moon we must learn of the temperatures to temper them at. |
| about Ni and Co based superalloys, see: http://www.machinedesign.com/ASP/page/1/catId/361/strArticleFileName/BDE/materials/bdemat6/bdemat6_9.html /viewBDEArticle.asp http://www.steelforge.com/ferrous/ironbasedsuperalloys.htm martensitic superalloys used at less than 1000 F. austentitic at 1000 F. and above |
| David A. Dietzler, 2007 |
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| TiO2 particle covered with iron blebs. |