Iron Beneficiation

Beneficiation is the process of increasing the concentration of a valuable component of an ore.

Native iron particles exist in lunar soil in fairly large quantities. They come from nickel-iron meteorites, which pulverise themselves and the lunar rocks which they impacted. Hence the iron particles are tiny (fine grained) and well mixed into the fine dust of the lunar regolith. But they are chemically distinct, and in a pure metal state therefore no chemical processing is needed to separate the metal particles from the rocky dust particles.

liquid phase separation

The density of iron is much higher than the rocky dust. Therefore, it is possible that the different particles could be separated by mixing lunar regolith into a suitable liquid, then allowing the rocky dust (mostly Basalt or similar) to float and the iron particles to sink.

density of iron is 7.86 g/cm3

density of basalt is 2.9 g/cm3

Need a liquid which has a density in between, then the iron will sink and the basalt will float.

Possible liquids:

Room Temperature

Bromine = 3.1028 g/cm3

Cryogenic

None identified to date.

High Temperature

(Basalt melts at about 1900 deg F) (Iron melts at 2800 deg F)

• Iodine pentafluoride Density and phase: 3.250 g cm−3 liquid, Melting point 9.43°C (282.58 K)
• Molten Tin at 6.99  g·cm−3 (melting point 505.08 K (231.93 °C, 449.47 °F))
• Molten salts perhaps

Unsuitable liquids

• Molten wax is too light.
• Molten Lead is much too heavy at 10.66  g·cm−3)
• Silver is much too heavy
• Gold is much too heavy
• Mercury is much too heavy