Extraction of Water from the Martian Atmosphere

We report on experiments to validate a concept for extracting water vapor from the Martian atmosphere by adsorption. The adsorber investigated is zeolite 3A, a synthetic molecular sieve that has a cage‐like microstructure with an effective aperture of 3A. This micropore size allows water molecules to enter but excludes carbon dioxide molecules, which comprise 95% of the Martian atmosphere. Although the literature on zeolites is extensive, there is little information available on type 3A zeolite at Mars ambient conditions, i.e., temperatures of ∼150–250 K and water vapor pressures ranging from ∼10−3 Pa to ∼1 Pa. To obtain the desired adsorption data we developed a continuous flow Mars environmental simulation facility capable of precisely generating and controlling for long durations the desired pressures, temperatures, and humidities. The experiments conducted to date have produced measurements of the magnitudes and trends of the uptake kinetics and equilibrium capacity of a small‐scale packed bed of zeol...