An assumption for laser zone refining applied in the lunar

With the development of lunar exploration, researches have proposed a large number of techniques for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). Due to microgravity in the Moon, traditional metallurgy such as cold hearth melting is hard to refining metals or alloys. Hence, this paper proposed a new zone refining technique using solar-pump laser as heat source, which would be a potential titanium metallurgical technique in the lunar in future. Numerical simulation and thermodynamic equilibrium distribution calculation were conducted in order to investigate the theoretical feasibility of titanium zone refining using laser heating. The results show that laser zone refining is capable of segregation of titanium and iron in theory. Thus, the design of zone refining of titanium in lunar implementing appropriate laser parameters is possible to be successful in the near future.

Laser heating, zone refining, titanium

Liping Wang, Guangshi Li, Lang Che, Hongwei Cheng, Xingli Zou, Qian Xu, Xionggang Lu, An assumption for laser zone refining applied in the lunar. 2019 Scientific Conference on Network, Power Systems and Computing (NPSC 2019), 2019: 73-77. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33969/EECS.V3.017.