Liquid Sorption Pump

The Liquid Sorption Pump (LSP) is a new technology for acquiring CO2 from the Martian atmosphere for use in In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) systems. In the LSP, a solvent, such as an alcohol, ketone, or acetate is cooled to temperatures below -100 C, where it becomes an effective solvent for Mars atmospheric CO2. After absorbing 5 percent or more by mole CO2, the solvent is pumped to another vessel where it is heated to 30 C, releasing the CO2 at pressures of more than 1 bar. The clean warm solvent is then sent back to the absorption vessel, exchanging heat with the cold absorption column effluent as it goes. After the clean solvent is cooled to near the design absorption temperature in this way, a mechanical refrigerator is used to achieve the final temperature reduction. Advantages of the LSP are that it can operate continuously day or night without the need for mechanical vacuum roughing pumps, solid freezers, or large sorption beds, requires less power than other options, is readily scalable to high outputs, and that it stops all sulfur, dust, or non-condensable gases from reaching the ISRU reactor system. In the proposed SBIR Phase 2, an operating protoflight LSP unit meeting the full-scale NASA CO2 acquisition requirement needed to support will be demonstrated and its performance assessed.