Over the past few years, Space technology has taken giant leaps but till there are many bottlenecks for manned space missions. For carrying a long space mission to send humans to destinations like Mars, the mission teams are facing many challenges.
The major obstacle faced by scientists is the supply of oxygen, as long-duration space missions include years of travelling. As per researchers, the oxygen tanks could not be shuttled out to resupply the astronauts, so the air needs to be recycled.
NASA is funding several projects which aim to solve this problem and find a suitable solution for it.
Recently, a scientist at NASA’s Glenn Research Center contacted Feng Jiao after he and his colleagues published a paper in Nature Communications in January 2014.
Jiao’s team created a silver electro-catalyst by using its carefully designed nanoscale structure. It can convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide with 92% effectiveness.
Researchers associated with the finding said that the device could be used to supply oxygen during the long space missions.
The catalyst is a silver coating on the surface of an electrode which increases the efficiency of the CO2-CO reaction by assisting the transfer of electrons.
Jiao said the catalysts performance has been much better than others so far. He said that the catalyst is quite selective and efficient.
As per researchers, carbon monoxide is being used for several industrial purposes. But the basic idea was to convert abundant CO2 to useful CO, where oxygen will be freed from carbon dioxide.
Jiao and the NASA scientist, Ken Burke, are co-principal investigators to develop the most efficient oxygen recycling system possible.
Burke’s lab has been working on a technology that converts two molecules of carbon monoxide to one molecule of carbon dioxide and one molecule of carbon.
Jiao said that if they combine their systems, then they would be able to split CO2 to one molecule of carbon and one molecule of oxygen.
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