Dual Use Technologies for Self-Sufficient Settlements: From the Ground Up

Peter J. Schubert, Ph.D., P.E.,
Packer Engineering, Inc., Naperville, IL, 60563

Abstract

To become self-sufficient, remote communities must harness energy native to their environment, and possess conversion technologies to transform raw materials into finished goods. This paper presents new, dual use thermochemical conversion technology which can be used to produce multiple output streams from biomass for terrestrial applications, and which is being developed to produce multiple output streams from regolith for lunar settlements. Both programs are funded, the first by USDA and DOE, and the second by NASA. From biomass, a farm or village can produce the following, in increasing order of difficulty: heat, mineral ash, biochar, electricity, ethanol, and nitrogen fertilizer. The mineral ash can be further processed to produce photovoltaic-grade silicon. The biochar is a carbon negative soil augmentation, and together with fertilizer, can help grow more biomass. Ethanol can be used as a vehicle fuel, and as a libation. There are five patents pending on this biomass-to-energy work, which is based upon three patents already granted on regolith-to-metals processing in space. Recent technical publications outline how to form these into solar cells in situ. A major milestone in small-scale biomass power generation was achieved in August 2010 when the alpha prototype met all air pollution limits imposed by the EPA. This technology is ready to commercialize for combined heat and power plus biochar; with ethanol, fertilizer, and PV silicon to follow in another two years. The synergies between terrestrial and space technologies is sufficient that improvements on earth will help advance the technology readiness level for the first lunar base. In this paper, the technologies are presented, compared, and mapped to self-sufficient settlements built from the ground up.

Presented at ISDC 2011 - Huntsville. Paper and presentation charts are not available.