Blue Alchemist: solar panels made of lunar dust
The aerospace company of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says it has succeeded in producing functioning solar panels from lunar dust. Good news, because it is outrageously expensive and takes a lot of energy to bring materials from the Earth to the Moon. The technology of Blue Alchemist on Earth is also very interesting.
Intense space rivalry brings innovation
Nothing is as good for space travel as a cold war, and in that respect the space race between the United States, Russia and China has really started.
There has always been hatred and envy among tech billionaires with aerospace hobby, especially between SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. NASA is not too happy with the huge cost overruns of the spaceships where the SLS consortium of -among others- Bezos, where competitor SpaceX can do it for much lower rates.
That is why this success of Blue Alchemist is called for BlueOrigin, Bezos’ aerospace company.
How does Blue Alchemist’s technology work?
Moon dust, the scientific term for lunar regolith, covers the lunar surface as a layer of grit several meters thick. It consists of grit, small dust particles of a few micrometres in size. Because there is no water or erosion on the moon, the edges of the powder particles are very sharp and harmful to inhale. Especially for our cells, an introduction turns out badly, because they haphazardly pierce cell membranes. But in a space suit you don’t have to worry about that.
The dust particles consist of silicon, oxygen and oxygen-linked metals such as magnesium, iron, calcium, aluminum and traces of other elements. Standard solar panels also consist of silicon. This means that it is possible to make solar panels from regolith, with oxygen and metals as a residual product.
Of course you have to be able to purify the silicon very well. For high quality solar panels you need 99.999 percent pure silicon. This is done by electrolysis. First the iron is released, then silicon and finally aluminum. And oxygen is constantly being released, which astronauts can breathe and which you can also use as rocket propellant.
The purification process works by heating the regolith to 1600 degrees and then using an electric current to separate the mixture into oxygen and the residual fraction. the solar panel itself consists of pure silicon, but it must be protected against aggressive cosmic rays. For this, the materials from the rest of the mixture are used to manufacture a kind of protective glass. Experiments by Blue Origin show that these Blue Alchemist solar panels can withstand the harsh conditions on the moon for more than 10 years.
Blue Alchemist eco solar panels on Earth
This technology is also good news for us earthlings. No CO2 or toxic chemicals are released during production. Toxic and explosive chemicals also do not have to be used to make them, as with today’s solar panels.
This means that you could also very well use this in deserts such as the Sahara to manufacture large-scale, ecologically responsible, solar panels there. without the need for further other materials, as regolite is quite similar in chemical composition to the composition of desert sand. A sunny prospect, of course. The Blue Origin article does not mention anything about the efficiency of the solar panels. But given the enormous available surface area, that is not a very big problem.
Source: Blue Origin
