In fact, there are several similar structures in the world. Let's start with Solar Furnace in France, i.e. France.
The Solar Furnace in France is designed to generate and concentrate the high temperatures required for various processes.
This is done by capturing the sun's rays and concentrating their energy in one place. The structure is covered with curved mirrors, their radiance is so great that it is impossible to look at them, it hurts in the eyes. In 1970, this structure was erected, the Eastern Pyrenees was chosen as the most suitable place. And to this day, the Furnace remains the largest in the world.
An array of mirrors are assigned the functions of a parabolic reflector, and a high temperature regime at the focus itself can reach 3500 degrees. Moreover, you can adjust the temperature by changing the angles of the mirrors.
The Solar Oven, using a natural resource such as sunlight, is considered an indispensable method for generating high temperatures. And they, in turn, are used for a variety of processes. So, hydrogen production requires a temperature of 1400 degrees. Test modes of materials carried out in high-temperature conditions provide for a temperature of 2500 degrees. This is how spacecraft and nuclear reactors are tested.
So the Solar Oven is not just an amazing building, but also vital and efficient, while being considered an environmentally friendly and relatively cheap way to get high temperatures.
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The array of mirrors acts as a parabolic reflector. The light is focused in one center. And the temperature there can reach temperatures at which steel can be melted.
But the temperature can be adjusted by setting the mirrors at different angles.
For example, temperatures around 1400 degrees are used to produce hydrogen. Temperature 2500 degrees - for testing materials in extreme conditions. For example, nuclear reactors and spacecraft are tested this way. But temperatures up to 3500 degrees are used for the manufacture of nanomaterials.
The Solar Oven is an inexpensive, efficient and environmentally friendly way of generating high temperatures.
In the southwest of France grapes take root remarkably and all kinds of fruits ripen - it's hot! Among other things, the sun shines here almost 300 days a year, and in terms of the number of clear days, these places are perhaps second only to the Cote d'Azur. If we characterize the valley near Odeillo from the point of view of physics, then the power of light radiation here is 800 watts per 1 square meter. Eight powerful incandescent bulbs. Little? Enough for a piece of basalt to spread into a puddle!
Let's continue our tour with Onliner.by magazine:
“The solar oven in Odeillo has a capacity of 1 megawatt, and this requires almost 3,000 meters of mirror surface,” says Serge Chauvin, caretaker of the local solar energy museum. - Moreover, you need to collect light from such a large surface into a focal point with a diameter of a dinner plate.
Heliostats - special mirror plates - are installed opposite the parabolic mirror. There are 63 of them with 180 sections. Each heliostat has its own "point of responsibility" - a sector of the parabola, which reflects the collected light. Already on a concave mirror, the rays of the sun are collected in a focal point - the very oven. Depending on the intensity of the radiation (read - the clarity of the sky, the time of day and the time of year), the temperatures can be very different. In theory - up to 3800 degrees Celsius, in reality it went up to 3600.
“Together with the movement of the sun, heliostats move across the sky,” Serge Chauvin begins his excursion. - Each has an engine at the back, and together they are controlled centrally. It is not necessary to set them in the ideal position - depending on the tasks of the laboratory, the degree at the focal point can be varied.
The construction of the solar oven in Odeillo began in the early 60s, and was commissioned already in the 70s. For a long time it remained the only one of its kind on the planet, but in 1987 a copy was erected near Tashkent. Serge Chauvin smiles: "Yes, exactly a copy."
The Soviet oven, by the way, also remains operational. On it, however, they carry out not only experiments, but also perform some practical tasks. True, the location of the furnace does not allow reaching the same high temperatures as in France - at the focal point Uzbek scientists manage to get less than 3000 degrees.
The parabolic mirror consists of 9000 facets. Each is polished, aluminum-coated and slightly concave for better focus. After the kiln building was built, all the facets were installed and calibrated by hand - it took three years!
Serge Chauvin leads us to a site near the oven building. Together with us - a group of tourists who arrived in Odeillo by bus - the flow of lovers of scientific exoticism never stops. The museum curator was about to demonstrate the hidden potential of solar energy.
- Madame and monsieur, your attention! - Although Serge looks more like a scientist, he looks more like an actor. - The light emitted by our star allows materials to instantly heat, ignite and melt them.
A solar oven worker picks up a regular branch and places it in a large vat with a mirrored interior. It takes Serge Chauvin a few seconds to find the focus point, and the stick instantly flares up. Wonders!
While the French grandparents gasp and groan, the museum worker goes over to a free-standing heliostat and moves it exactly so that the reflected rays fall into a smaller copy of the parabolic mirror installed right there. This is another visual experiment showing the capabilities of the sun.
- Madame and monsieur, now we will melt the metal!
Serge Chauvin sets a piece of iron in the holder, moves the vise in search of a focal point and, having found it, moves away a short distance.
The sun is quickly doing its job.
A piece of iron instantly heats up, begins to smoke and even sparks, succumbing to the hot rays. In just 10-15 seconds, a hole the size of a 10 euro cent coin is burned in it.
- Voila! - Serge rejoices.
As we return to the museum building, and the French tourists sit down in the cinema hall to watch a scientific film about the work of the solar oven and laboratory, the caretaker tells us interesting things.
- Most often people ask why all this is needed, - Serge Chauvin throws up his hands. - From the point of view of science, the possibilities of solar energy have been studied, applied where possible in everyday life. But there are tasks that, in terms of their scale and complexity of execution, require installations like this. For example, how do we simulate the effect of the sun on the skin of a spacecraft? Or heating the descent capsule returning from orbit to Earth?
In a special refractory container, installed at the focal point of the solar oven, you can recreate such, without exaggeration, unearthly conditions. It has been calculated, for example, that a cladding element must withstand temperatures of 2500 degrees Celsius - and this can be tested empirically here in Odeillo.
The caretaker takes us through the museum, where various exhibits are installed - participants in numerous experiments carried out in the oven. Our attention is drawn to the carbon brake disc …
- Oh, this thing is from the wheel of a Formula 1 car, - nods Serge. - Its heating under some conditions is comparable to what we can reproduce in the laboratory.
As mentioned above, the temperature at the focal point can be controlled using heliostats. Depending on the experiments carried out, it varies from 1400 to 3500 degrees. The lower limit is required for the production of hydrogen in the laboratory, a range of 2200 to 3000 for testing various materials under extreme heat conditions. Finally, above 3000 is the area of work with nanomaterials, ceramics and the creation of new materials.
“The oven at Odeillo does not fulfill practical tasks,” continues Serge Chauvin. - Unlike our Uzbek colleagues, we do not depend on our own economic activities and are engaged exclusively in science. Among our customers are not only scientists, but also various departments, for example, defense.
We just stop at a ceramic capsule, which turns out to be the hull of a drone ship.
“The War Department built a solar oven of a smaller diameter for its own practical needs here, in the valley near Odeillo,” says Serge. - It can be seen from some sections of the mountain road. But for scientific experiments, they still turn to us.
The supervisor explains what is the advantage of solar energy over any other in the course of performing scientific tasks.
- First, the sun shines for free, - he bends his fingers. - Secondly, mountain air contributes to conducting experiments in a "pure" form - without impurities. Third, sunlight allows materials to be heated much faster than any other installation, which is extremely important for some experiments.
It is curious that the oven can work almost all year round. According to Serge Chauvin, the optimal month for conducting experiments is April.
- But if necessary, the sun will melt a piece of metal for tourists even in January, - the caretaker smiles. - The main thing is that the sky is clear and cloudless.
One of the indisputable advantages of the very existence of this unique laboratory is its complete openness to tourists. Up to 80 thousand people come here annually, and this does much more to popularize science among adults and children than a school or university.
Font Romeu Odeillo is a typical pastoral French town. Its main difference from thousands of others is the coexistence of the mystery of everyday life and science. Against the background of a 54-meter mirror parabola - mountain dairy cows. And the constant hot sun.
Now let's move on to another building.
Part of Viktor Borisov's photographs.
Forty-five kilometers from Tashkent, in the Parkent district, in the foothills of the Tien Shan at an altitude of 1050 meters above sea level, there is a unique structure - the so-called Large Solar Oven (BSP) with a capacity of one thousand kilowatts. It is located on the territory of the Institute of Materials Science NPO "Physics-Sun" of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan. There are only two such stoves in the world, the second is in France.
“The BSP was put into operation during the Soviet Union in 1987,” says Mirzasultan Mamatkassymov, the scientific secretary of the Institute of Materials Science of NPO Physics-Solntse, Ph. D. - Sufficient funds are allocated from the state budget to preserve this unique object. Two laboratories of the institute are located in our country, four in Tashkent, where the main scientific base is located, on which the chemical and physical properties of new materials are studied. We are in the process of their synthesis. We experiment with these materials, observing the melting process at different temperatures.
BSP is a complex optical-mechanical complex with automatic control systems. The complex consists of a heliostat field located on the side of a mountain and directing the sun's rays into a paraboloid concentrator, which is a giant concave mirror. In the focus of this mirror, the highest temperature is created - 3000 degrees Celsius!
The heliostat field consists of sixty-two staggered heliostats. They provide the mirror surface of the concentrator with a light flux in the mode of continuous tracking of the Sun throughout the day. Each heliostat, measuring seven and a half by six and a half meters, consists of 195 flat mirror elements called "facets". The reflecting area of the heliostat field is 3022 square meters.
The concentrator, to which the heliostats direct the sun's rays, is a Cyclopean structure forty-five meters high and fifty-four meters wide.
It should be noted that the advantage of solar ovens, in comparison with other types of ovens, is the instantaneous achievement of a high temperature, which makes it possible to obtain pure materials without impurities (due also to the purity of the mountain air). They are used for oil and gas, textile and a number of other industries.
Mirrors have a certain service life and sooner or later fail. In our workshops, we manufacture new mirrors that replace the old ones. There are 10700 of them only in the concentrator, and 12090 in heliostats. The process of making mirrors takes place in vacuum installations, where aluminum is sprayed onto the surface of the spent mirrors.
Ferghana. Ru: - How do you solve the problem of finding specialists, after all, after the collapse of the Union, they were outflowing abroad?
Mirzasultan Mamatkassymov: - At the time of the installation in 1987, specialists from Russia and Ukraine worked here, who trained ours. Thanks to our experience, we now have the opportunity to train specialists in this field on our own. Young people come to us from the physics department of the National University of Uzbekistan. After graduating from university, I myself have been working here since 1991.
Ferghana. Ru: - When you look at this grandiose structure, at the delicate metal structures, as if floating in the air and at the same time supporting the "armor" of the concentrator, frames of sci-fi films come to mind …
Mirzasultan Mamatkassymov: - Well, in my lifetime no one has tried to shoot science fiction using these unique "scenery". True, Uzbek pop stars came to shoot their clips.
Mirzasultan Mamatkassymov:- Today we will melt briquettes pressed from powdered aluminum oxide, the melting point of which is 2500 degrees Celsius. During the melting process, the material flows down an inclined plane and drips into a special tray, where granules are formed. They are sent to a ceramic workshop located near the BSP, where they are ground and used for the manufacture of various ceramic products, ranging from small yarn feeders for the textile industry to hollow ceramic balls resembling billiard rooms. The balls are used in the oil and gas industry as floats. At the same time, evaporation from the surface of petroleum products stored in large containers at oil depots decreases by 15-20 percent. In recent years, we have produced about six hundred thousand of these floats.
We manufacture insulators and other products for the electrical industry. They are characterized by increased wear resistance and strength. In addition to aluminum oxide, we also use a more refractory material - zirconium oxide with a melting point of 2700 degrees Celsius.
Control over the melting process is carried out by the so-called "vision system", which is equipped with two special cameras. One of them directly transfers the image to a separate monitor, the other to a computer. The system allows you to both monitor the melting process and carry out various measurements.
It should be added that BLB is also used as a universal astrophysical instrument that opens up the possibility of conducting studies of the starry sky at night.
In addition to the above works, the institute pays great attention to the manufacture of medical equipment based on functional ceramics (sterilizers), abrasive instruments, dryers and much more. Such equipment has been successfully implemented in medical institutions of our republic, as well as in similar institutions in Malaysia, Germany, Georgia and Russia.
In parallel, the institute developed low-power solar installations. For example, the scientists of the institute have created solar furnaces with a capacity of one and a half kilowatts, which were installed on the territory of the Tabbin Institute of Metallurgy (Egypt) and at the International Metallurgical Center in Hyderabad (India).