Material Extraction

With the invention of machines that can manipulate matter at the atomic level, the processes of refining material also advanced. As machines only needed supplies of the appropriate type of atoms or very simple compounds, rather than large molecules or blocks of material, refining was made somewhat simpler, all that was needed was a machine that could render the base material down to its component atoms, and store these atoms separately.

The machines developed for this process all tend to revolve around one particular design, generally most designs are divided up into three different parts, the section that atomizes the material, the part that separates these atoms, and another compartment that prepares these atoms for storage.

The first process is the most energy intensive and the most problematical. The separation process works by sorting the atoms by mass, which is reflected by the degree of deflection they exhibit in a magnetic field. However for atoms to be deflected by a magnetic field they need to possess a net charge this means either adding or subtracting electrons from the atoms. Adding electrons to a material is one option, but first the material needs to be atomized, and it is hard to make sure that electrons are added evenly to all the atoms, the somewhat easier method works with the properties of plasmas.

In plasma there are no bonds between atoms such as in molecules, in this atomic state they are ideal, also in plasmas even the atoms begin to come apart, with electrons lost from the nucleus. Plasmas are soups of charged particles, with nuclei and electrons living free of each other, this material is ideal for the separation process, as the particles will have a standard charge, and exist atomically already.

The generation of plasmas is very energy intensive, bonds between atoms need to be broken, and even the structure of the atom has to be torn apart. The high energies required are supplied by very high temperature reaction, and high-energy irradiation. Typically a linear fusion reactor it used, the reactor generates power for the rest of the processes, and the hot exhaust that runs out from one end is used to convert material to high-energy plasma. The mix of exhaust and material is perfectly suited for the next stage of the process.

It has already been stated that the atoms are separated by mass, and that this is done in a magnetic field.  Charged atoms, or ions, are deflected by magnetic fields, however if all the atoms travel at the same speeds, the deflection of atoms will based purely on their momentum, a large oil tanker is harder and slower to steer, than a small yacht, so a small atom is easier deflected than a heavier one. In the machine this means that light atoms are deflected more than heavier atoms, and so a single matter stream is split according to atomic masses, like white light in a prism is split due to wavelength.

All that remains to be done is for these purified matter streams to be stored, with the gases liquefaction or combination with another element to form a simple salt, with solids formation of pure blocks of material is suitable.

This technology has proved ideal for closing otherwise complicated matter cycling in spacecraft, where access to extra matter, or disposing of waste would prove difficult. The processes used above are often used with synthesizer technology, which can assemble objects, even food from elemental constituents. This process has also been used on far greater scales, such as for the production of ships or for other spaceborne facilities.