Cool video of what 3500°C does:
BoingBoing explains:
In this clip from BBC One’s “Bang Goes the Theory,” a clip of a high-performance solar furnace that can focus normal sunshine into a heat-ray that reaches 3,500C, hot enough to melt rocks.
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Astonishing, there is nothing on earth which withstands the temperature of this solar heater device.
Couldn’t solar furnaces be used for all industrial processes that require heat? (Many processes require consistent heat, more even than is available in deserts, but still . . .)
Especially making glass. Deserts have sand and sunshine.
Thanks for that.
Now carefully stored in the “Cool for School” repository.
According to theory, the sun’s radiation can be focused to reach the temperature of the surface of the sun, about 6,000 C (or 10,000 F). It is, after all, nuclear fusion generated, electromagnetic, ionizing radiation, i.e. nuclear power.
Received by the entire planet it equates to some 170 million gigawatts, or about 10,000 times humanities use of “energy” (read: “fuels” from primarily oxidizing and fissioning the lithosphere).
Prokaryotes wrote: “Astonishing; there is [no material] on Earth which withstands the temperature of this solar heater device.”
But there are some which would give it a good fight:
Carbon: 3652°C
Tungsten: 3410°C
Rhenium: 3180°C
What few people know is that solar concentrators are the lowest cost type solar collector (about $100/m^2), and most useful.
That is fantastic.
Thanks.
You can’t do as well as James 6000C (actually it is closer to 5500C), because the atmosphere has absorbed or scattered some out of the direct beam and reflectors are imperfect and so on. Actually 3500C sounds pretty good.