Engineering, construction, and operations in space

Abstract

The century-old Mond process for carbonyl extraction of metals from ore shows great promise as an efficient low energy scheme for producing high-purity Fe, Ni, Cr, Mn, and Co from lunar or asteroidal feedstocks. Scenarios for winning oxygen from the lunar regolith can be enhanced by carbonyl processing of the metallic alloy by-products of such operations. The native metal content of asteroidal regoliths is even more suitable to carbonyl processing. High-purity, corrosion resistant Fe and Ni can be extracted from asteroidial feedstocks along with a Co-rich residue containing 0.5 percent platinum-group metals. The resulting gaseous metal carbonyl can produce a variety of end products using efficient vapor forming techniques.