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Green Technology Products for Sustainable Development
Published in Miguel A. Esteso, Ana Cristina Faria Ribeiro, A. K. Haghi, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering for Sustainable Development, 2020
In a solar furnace, high temperature (up to 6330 °F) is obtained for industrial purposes by concentrating the solar radiation onto a substance using a number of heliostats or turnable mirror. Back in the seventh century b.c.e., magnifying glasses were used to concentrate the sun’s rays and light a fire. By the third century b.c.e., Greeks and Romans were known to bounce off sunlight of “burning mirrors” to light torches for religious ceremonies. Historians claim that as early as in 212 b.c.e., Archimedes, a Greek inventor, made use of the reflective properties of highly polished bronze shields to concentrate the sun’s rays to set fire on the Roman ships attacking Syracuse. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, French scientist, and naturalist, in 1695, used a mirror to focus sunlight and achieve a temperature high enough to burn wood and melt lead as well. Antoine Lavoisier, in 1782, focused sunlight using a lens and achieved temperature as high as 3000 °F, capable enough to melt previously unmeltable platinum. The largest solar furnace opened in 1970 at Odeillo in the Pyrénées-Orientales in France employs an array of plane mirrors to gather sunlight, reflecting it onto a larger curved mirror. Asia’s largest solar furnace was built in Uzbekistan in 1981 and is also known as the Sun Institute of Uzbekistan. The energy thereby obtained can be used for hydrogen fuel production, foundry applications, and high-temperature testing.
The Economics of Bulk Solar Energy Conversion Systems (SEC)
Published in Khalil Denno, Engineering Economics of Alternative Energy Sources, 1990
Concentrator (solar furnace) could be a complex of parabolic mirrors and lenses with optimum aperture ratio, focusing solar energy on a boiler. The concentrating system also could be a group of plastic lenses with suitable aperture ratios.
Review on advancement in solar and waste heat based thermoelectric generator
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2023
Sanjeev Kumar Bhukesh, Suresh Kumar Gawre, Anil Kumar
Solar furnace is designed to produce high temperature by capturing sunlight and applying industries through a curved mirror that works as a parabolic reflector. The curved mirror concentrates the light over a focal length. Focal length can reach up to 6330F (i.e. 3500°C) and generated heat can produce nanomaterial, hydrogen fuel, melting steel and electricity generation. To attain high temperatures, solar energy is concentrated inside the solar furnace. It constitutes heliostats or parabolic mirrors for concentrating light over a focal length. It has a mechanical structure and complex optical structure with a system that is controlled automatically. Solar furnace principle is applied to solar water pasteurization, solar powered barbecues, and low-cost solar cookers.
Concentrated solar energy in materials processing
Published in International Journal of Ambient Energy, 2020
Pushkaraj D. Sonawane, V. K. Bupesh Raja
In few seconds, 3000°C temperature was achieved in solar furnace and found to be very useful for high-temperature materials processing. As per the size of solar furnace, irradiation of large sample size was possible. Control of material heat cycling may be performed according to the requirements (Flamant and Balat-Pichelin 2016).
A State-Of-The-Art Review on Materials Production and Processing Using Solar Energy
Published in Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review, 2023
As it was reported in the previous section, the main advantages of solar furnace in materials processing are the shortening in sintering times and the reduction of the foaming temperature, i.e. García-Cambronero et al. (2008) obtained that heating was faster in a solar fluidized bed furnace than in the preheated electric furnace, which allowed the foaming process at lower temperatures (670–700°C, or even lower with the mold put directly in the bed, instead of 750°C). Research has continued in this line in the last lustrum. Kovacik et al. (2018) and Kovacik et al. (2021) carried out the foaming of TiC-TiB2 ceramic foams using solar energy. They started from green compacts of 15.2 mm in diameter and 4 mm in thickness (280 MPa) consisting of Ti + 15 vol. % B4C, which were treated in 40 kW solar furnace in Almería (Spain) under argon atmosphere at temperatures in the range 1200–1600°C for 5–30 min using as optimal heating rate 220°C/min. A 45% ceramic foam comprising TiB2, TiC, and complex TiBxC1-x phases was successfully prepared by self-propagating high-temperature synthesis using solar energy. The main novelty of this research was the application of solar energy for the first time in the synthesis of ceramic foams. On their behalf, Cañadilla, Romero, and Rodríguez (2021) prepared aluminum foams from pure aluminum powder and saccharose as space-holder material with ethanol as organic binder, using different proportions of soluble space holder (50, 60, and 70 vol. %), in the form of green compact cylinders of 16 mm in diameter and 5 mm in height (200 MPa-5 min). After the removal of the space holder and ethanol, specimens were sintered using a Fresnel lens in hermetic reaction chamber on alumina bed to avoid overheating and temperature gradient along the vertical direction. Chamber had a quartz cover to allow solar radiation to enter the chamber. Argon atmosphere was used in the experiments to avoid the oxidation of the samples, and sintering temperature was in the range 500–600°C for 10–20 min. As a result of the saccharose, as space holder, allowed to obtain final porosities with few deviations with respect to the design values. Cañadilla, Romero, and Rodríguez (2021), as other researchers working with foams, achieved significant reductions in sintering times using solar energy (from >9 h in conventional furnaces to 30 min in Fresnel lens equipment) and with even better mechanical properties than aluminum foams manufactured by conventional methods.