Numerical Simulation and Design of a Lunar Sample Unsealing and Processing Equipment

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series 2020-11, Vol.1678 (1), p.12075
• Main Authors: Jin, Wang, Zhenlin, Wang, Chunjie, Yan, Xuesong, Wang, Chunyong, Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chambers; Mathematical models; Nitrogen; Oxygen; Physics; Purity; Simulation; Switches
• ISSN: 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/1678/1/012075

Lunar Sample Unsealing and Processing Equipment (LSUPE) is an equipment which is used to vacuum unseal the Vacuum Lunar Sample Container (VLSC) and to take pictures, weigh and process lunar samples. LSUPE is mainly composed of four parts, the transfer chamber, operate chamber, unseal chamber and gas purification system. The operate chamber needs to maintain a high-purity nitrogen environment all the times to prevent samples from being polluted by the atmosphere which affects subsequent analysis of the samples. The unseal chamber switches vacuum environment to high-purity nitrogen environment. The high-purity nitrogen environment ensures that the sample is not contaminated after unsealing, and the vacuum environment ensures that the VLSC can be unsealed. In order to ensure that the water and oxygen concentration indexes in the two chambers meet the requirements at all times after the lunar sample is unsealed, this paper gives the LSUPE simulation design process, and establishes a simulation calculation model for the water and oxygen concentration. The calculation results show that the internal water and oxygen concentrations of LSUPE are better than 10ppm in any state, which meets the requirements for storage and processing lunar samples.