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Mars colonists could create a carbon dioxide plasma in order to supply oxygen to their settlement(s):
The atmosphere on Mars is 96 per cent carbon dioxide, says Vasco Guerra at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. This can be split to extract breathable oxygen and carbon monoxide, a fuel that could give us a "gas station on the Red Planet", he says. He and his team calculate that creating a carbon dioxide plasma — a mush of ions made by passing an electric current through a gas — could split carbon dioxide from oxygen more easily on Mars than on Earth.
The lower atmospheric pressure on Mars would allow us to create plasmas without the vacuum pumps or compressors necessary on Earth. Also, the temperature of around -60°C is just right to let the plasma more easily break one of the chemical bonds that keeps carbon and oxygen tightly bound, while preventing the carbon dioxide from re-forming.
For now, this is largely theoretical, but they say such a system needing only 150 to 200 Watts for 4 hours each 25-hour Mars day could produce 8 to 16 kilograms of oxygen. "The International Space Station currently consumes oxygen in the range of 2 to 5 kilograms per day, so this would be enough to support a small settlement," says Guerra.
The case for in situ resource utilisation for oxygen production on Mars by nonequilibrium plasmas (open, DOI: 10.1088/1361-6595) (DX)
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Saturday October 28 2017, @03:50AM
According to NASA's tests on Martian-like soil, plants will do just fine on Mars, and that's before we mix in all kinds of good stuff for them to grow on, like mycorrhizae, worm castings, biochar and composted waste, etc. If you manage to "suddenly" kill off even a small percentage of the plant species you brought with you it will be a sign that you majorly screwed up your biodiversity choices at the planning stage, or you're doing something unimaginably wrong at the plant-growing stage. Any long-term expedition to another planet should have literally thousands of different types of plants and soil micro-flora/fauna cultures to work from, including dozens of different "heirloom" style hybridized variations of each type of plant for which there are variations available. Especially food plants. If we can't make a stable, sustainable plant-based ecosystem for human survival on Mars then we have no business going there in the first place. Given the proper biodiversity it should be extremely difficult to run into major issues keeping a plant-based system alive in any environment that a human can live in.
Yes, we will need lights, including grow lights, and all will likely be LED for efficiency, but all of that is a given. In order to live long-term we will need to be growing significant amounts of food, and even without adding huge tanks of oxygen-producing algae into the mix that will mean we will be growing plenty of plants per person to generate enough oxygen and recycle CO2.
I just hope we'd be smart enough to never use this oxygen and carbon monoxide producing plasma anywhere near anything connected to a human living space. Other than that, sounds like a really interesting idea. Since the waste gas from burning the fuel would just be a return to CO2 (I assume) it would technically be an ecologically neutral fuel source. At least on Mars.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ