Forschung-6 Module

The sixth Forschung module serves as a compact and versatile multi-purpose recycling plant. Most of the processes in use are fairly proven, but their adaptation to zero-G environment remains an experimental matter. As with all other modules, it shares the Kern’s overall frame and dimensions, though lacks thrusters and sees a significantly increased surface of solar arrays to meet its energy needs, as well as unusually high mass. Three categories of materials are recycled there: Metals, biomass and polymers.

The simplest of these matters is biomass, where various kinds of organic wastes are gathered and simply incinerated. This provides a modest supply of energy as well as a number of gas byproducts and is by far the smallest part of the module. The gases are scrubbed for use as feedstock, especially methane and CO2 which may be used as is to fuel CO2 gas laser cells, or broken down into usable elemental oxygen and carbon in E-6.

Most of the module is taken up by the metal recycling segment, which is primarily made up of a reasonably-sized furnace which can be used to heat up compound scrap at various temperature thresholds to selectively melt various elements one by one in order to separate them into purer slag. Zero-G smelting presents certain advantages, such as the lack of oxidation in vacuum removing the need for anti-oxidant clearing agents, and heavy thermal insulation allowing relatively small power flow to heat up the furnace to very high levels over time. The furnace’s primary chamber is made of iridium to allow it to melt nearly any metal and thus very expensive.

Extruded metal is cooled into rods, which are then transferred into a centrifugal disintegration chamber which melts the tip through solar magnification. These combined actions produce scattered droplets which rapidly solidify, creating powders which may then be used as feedstock in the multi-material 3D Printers of the F-2 module with relatively little need for energy or additional feedstock or agents such as gases and additives.

Similar processes are used in the recycling of polymers. Normally, polymers of different types do not merge well and naturally phase-separate, creating particularly weak material of little us, making recycling very difficult. This can be overcome using heat compression, where bulk polymers are melted and thoroughly mixed in large rotating drums. Though relatively small volumes of polymers need to be processed, the difficulty in identifying and separating scrap of sometimes unknown origin (as per decommissioned satellite recovery) makes this method attractive despite the high energy cost, and the centrifugal drum takes up the far end of the module.*

In addition to the industrial apparatus, spectroscopy equipment also constitutes an important part of the module, allowing the various scrap and resulting feedstock to be analyzed. This, in turn, allows for specific types of bonded polymers to be created by controlling the composition of input materials. It also allows the monitoring of metal slag’s composition for the creation of specific alloys prior to centrifugal powdering.