Reactor for production of heat and pure ISRU metal during lunar nights through thermite reaction

The documents describe the first work developed by Maana Electric in the frame of the ACME project. The aim of the activity is to develop a system to use thermite reaction produced from in-situ resources from lunar regolith and use the energy released by the metallothermic reaction as a Lunar Night Survival solution. These documents report the results of the first Proof-of-Concept car laboratories to validate that thermite in atmospheric condition can be generated from regolith and its beneficiated forms. From the outcomes of the PoC, a breadboard has been designed, integrated and tested. The testing with the breadboard allowed to investigate the ignition and propagation phenomena in vacuum conditions and provided several information on the behavior of different reactants combinations (LMS-1/Al, LHS-1/Al, ILM/Al and beneficiated LMS-1). Pre-processing of the regolith was also identified as potentially crucial to achieve full propagation of the reaction. Finally aspects to improve in the experimental setup have been identified to achieve a higher grade of confidence of the process.