Newark DE (SPX) Aug 11, 2022 Sustained space exploration will require infrastructure that doesn't...
Researchers are exploring ways to use clay-like topsoil materials from the moon or Mars as the basis for extraterrestrial cement.
To succeed will require a binder to glue the extraterrestrial starting materials together through chemistry.
When mixed with a solvent that has a high pH, such as sodium silicate, the clay can be dissolved, freeing the aluminum and silicon inside to react with other materials and form new structures - like cement.
This made Maria Katzarova, a former associate scientist and member of Wagner's lab at UD, wonder if it was possible to activate simulated moon and Martian soils to become concrete-like building materials using geopolymer chemistry.
The researchers systematically prepared geopolymer binders from a variety of known simulated soils in the same exact way and compared the materials' performance, which hadn't been done before.
The researchers also calculated how much terrestrial material astronauts would need to take with them to build a landing pad on the surface of the moon or Mars.
"There's going to be a tradeoff between whether we need to cast these materials in a pressurized environment to ensure the reaction forms the strongest material or whether can we get away with forming them under vacuum, the normal environment on the moon or Mars, and achieve something that's good enough," said Mills, who earned her doctoral degree in chemical engineering at UD in May 2022 and now works at Dow Chemical Company.
Another possible factor: the amount of aluminosilicate content in the starting materials, which can be tricky to estimate when added solutions may also contain small concentrations of these materials and contribute to material performance.
Understanding what affects material strength is important, too, since astronauts will be sourcing our topsoil materials from different places on planets - and maybe even different planets altogether.
Today, two of Wagner's current graduate students are exploring ways to use geopolymer cements to 3D-print houses and to activate geopolymer materials using microwave technology.