Solar Thermal Breakthrough

This discovery has implications for some of the most carbon intensive industries and processes on the planet

Just yesterday, an exciting scientific article was published on Cell.com that demonstrates Solar thermal trapping at 1,000°C and above

“People tend to only think about electricity as energy, but in fact, about half of the energy is used in the form of heat,” said Emiliano Casati, an engineer at ETH Zurich and the corresponding author of the study, in a Cell release. “To tackle climate change, we need to decarbonize energy in general.”

Essentially, not all industries and processes can be de-carbonised. For example, just the manufacture of concrete alone produces 8% of Global CO2 emissions, and a concrete manufacturing plant cannot be run on batteries, it must be run on heat.

This new process uses Quartz crystals, and charges them up with the energy of the sun to 1,000 Degrees, and then this heat can be re-released for use in manufacturing.

Typical solar panels and traditional solar thermal arrays would melt at 1,000 Degrees C, and using Solar Electric panels and then using Electricity to generate heat is an inefficient process.

For those with a scientific mind who have been worried that there is simply no way for the planet to de-carbonise, and therefore there is basically no way to avoid catastrophic climate change, this new process gives some hope that we may indeed be able to transition things like steel smelting plants to solar eventually.