The subject long-life, highly-efficient O2-CO cogeneration system will be developed to support NASA's development of In-situ Resource Utilization technologies, and will be capable of producing fuel and oxygen from carbon dioxide extracted from the Martian atmosphere, lunar regolith/soil, and/or from the cabin air of extraterrestrial human missions. In addition, the same system can be used for H2O electrolysis, from which the H2 product is used for synthesizing methane (via Sabatier reaction) to support In-situ Propellant Production (ISPP) development.
Potential non-NASA commercial applications lie in both the oxygen related industries and hydrogen markets, which are predicted to grow to $192.3 billion by year 2050 to support hydrogen vehicle deployment. Some applications include: (a) greenhouse gas reduction, (b) hydrogen production, (c) synthetic fuel production via integration of renewable energy with Co-electrolysis of CO2 and H2O, and (d) energy storage (convert renewable energy into synthetic fuels).
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