You already know how to turn CO2 into electricity and batteries

The new space race will not end until someone mount a self -sufficient colony on Mars, provided A company of such caliber Be available to our hand. For now, the Chinese Academy has been investigating how to generate and store energy without more raw material than the one that offers In situ The red planet.

Convert the Martian atmosphere into electricity. The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has designed A pioneering system to feed the future human bases of Mars with energy from its own atmosphere.

According to the study published in Science BulletinChinese thermal and energy engineers started from the Brayton cycle, on which the land gas turbines are based, but replacing noble gases such as xenon with the gases of the Martian atmosphere, dominated in 95% by carbon dioxide.

When using a available fluid In situthe circuit can be filled after any leak and avoids the logistics nightmare of having to send tons of gas packaged from the earth. But the most surprising thing is that it would achieve a conversion efficiency of up to 22%.

Take advantage of the atmosphere to store it. In addition to the Brayton generator that breathes CO2, another team from the same university He designed a battery of lithium-carbon dioxide (Li-Co2) that uses the CO2 of the atmosphere of Mars as an active discharge agent.

It is nothing more than a proof of concept, but in laboratory conditions at 0 ºC, the cells of this battery reached an energy density of 373 Wh Kg⁻¹ and a durability of 1,375 hours, the equivalent of two marian months. It could be combined with solar panels, burning CO2 at night or during dust storms, as a solution the intermission of solar energy.

Technology is similar to Lithium-Aire batteries, only instead of air, absorb the CO2 of the atmosphere and release energy to feed rovers and helicopters. It would be necessary to try it under variable pressure, radiation and fine dust that sneaks into all Martian mechanisms to approve.

China hopes to make history on Mars with Tianwen-3. China’s space program goes at a vertigo speed and these theoretical concepts could be tested on Mars in robotic missions before what we expect.

The Tianwen-3 probe of the CNSA Space Agency will mark the next landing of the Asian country on Mars. With a launch planned for 2028, it is the mission that expects to bring to the earth the First Martian soil samples after the cancellation of Mars Sample Return of the NASA.

Whether in this or any next robotic mission, seeing a closed, compact and filling generator running on Mars next to a CO2 -based storage system would be a giant jump towards that hypothetical future in which the human being will be a multiphenetary species.

Image | POT

In Xataka | No one has advanced NASA in the exploration of other planets from the USSR. China plans to do it even in Neptune