Challenges of Solid Oxide Electrolysis for Production of Fuel and Oxygen from Mars Atmospheric CO2

A new field of application for solid oxide electrolysis producing fuels from CO2 is emerging in the area of human exploration of Mars. The Martian atmosphere is 96% CO2, making it a prime resource for extraction of oxygen that will be needed by human explorers and for production of the fuel that will be needed for the ascent vehicle to return them to earth. The fundamental operating principles and materials of the Mars in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) application are no different than the hydrogen and synfuel applications developed in past decades. However there are circumstances of the ISRU application that place challenging constraints on the design and performance that have not been previously encountered in our SOEC development efforts. These issues are outlined and the approaches to address them are presented. Ceramatec is designing and building the SOEC (aka SOXE) stack for the MOXIE instrument on the Mars 2020 mission.