Lunar Oxygen Production

I thought I'd start a new thread in this section since no one has posted here in a while and nothing much seems to be happening on this front.

What about using an Archimedes screw to move regolith through a sealed chamber with a germanium window. Heat from a solar collector could be focused through the germanium onto the regolith inside the chamber to release oxygen. The oxygen could be collected from the chamber using a pump. The regolith would form a plug in the screw at each end to stop gases excaping. Regolith would be loaded into a hopper feeding the scew at one end and the spent regolith would exit the other end. The pump would keep chamber pressure down reducing leaks.

As another thought if you made the screw out of ceramics you could use an induction heater or microwave source to heat the regolith if you didn't want to rely on the sun.

Not sure what other gases would be liberated with the oxygen and how it would be separated but you only need a small motor to turn the screw, a pump and a means of keeping the hopper full at one end and the regolith removed at the other. Mounting the unit on a cliff edge where the spent regolith could be dumped could solve one problem.

To create a mechanically simple solar oven with a continuous feed?

I think you might create a whole lot of slag.