Space Resources Engineering: Ilmenite Deposits for Oxygen Production on the Moon

This decade is an incredible stage in the history of humanity. Man will return to the Moon to stay there. To successfully fulfill this enormous challenge, scientific staff will use the in-situ resources or ISRU, and terrestrial mining industry knowledge to produce prime matters. Oxygen and hydrogen are the crucial resources to obtain water, rocket fuel, and establish commercial activities between the Earth and the Moon. One alternative to produce oxygen is using metallurgical processing of oxide minerals as ilmenite. Also, iron and titanium could be produced from ilmenite to supply a future lunar aerospace industry, making attractive the exploration of this mineral. This paper discusses the ilmenite deposit features in the equator zone's Marias, especially in Mare Tranquillitatis. The author reviews the feasibility of producing oxygen from the ilmenite in a pyrometallurgical process, reviewing the reactions proposed through thermodynamic calculation with the Software HSC Chemistry 6.0 and the regolith sample’s geological data Apollo 11 to verify ore features that can affect the metallurgical behavior. Besides, there is a summary of the challenges to processing ilmenite associated with the degree of liberation. This research aims to clarify the industrial opportunities and challenges to produce oxygen on the Moon as a framework for future process architecture and equipment design.