World’s Largest Artificial Sun to Empower Solar Fuel Research
The sun has finally risen in Juelich in Germany.
No, it is not the sun that is the center of the solar system, but the world’s largest artificial sun that shone brightly for the first time.
The enormous machine, which looks like an insect’s eye, uses 149 lamps to simulate sunlight, making it a handy tool for testing things like solar panels or generating clean energy. Scientists threw the switch on the world’s largest artificial sun on Thursday, which happened to be the birthday of the fellow who designed it. “I had tears in my eyes today,” says project manager Kai Wieghardt of the German Aerospace Center. “It’s my baby, and it’s really the first time in my life that something I drew in my notebooks has been built in the same manner.”
Source: Barcroft
Scientists in Germany have finally turned on ‘Synlight’, which is composed of 149 powerful xenon short-arc lamps in a honeycomb setup. It has light that is 10,000 times the intensity of the solar radiation at the Earth’s surface, with temperatures at the target point of the lamps in an 8×8 spot reaching 3000°C.
It has been tested out at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Synlight has become the world’s biggest solar simulator.
Abstract
High-flux solar simulators, providing predictable and reproducible solar radiation, have emerged to indispensable tools for efficient development of CSP components or solar chemical processes. In the last decade, a number of such facilities have been erected, however significantly below the typical scale of pilot plants. DLR started the construction of a large solar simulator in Jülich near its solar power tower. The facilities’ modular design is novel and characterized by 149 individually controllable 7kW Xenon short-arc lamps. Solar radiant powers of up to 280kW and 2 x 220kW are expected to be available in three separately useable radiation chambers. In 2017, the large artificial sun shall be available for the global CSP and solar chemical community within cooperative research projects.
According to the scientists, its main goal is to improve the production processes for solar fuels, including hydrogen, which is considered as one of the most important renewable energy sources in the future – it burns without producing carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe but it is rare on Earth.
The extreme temperatures in this artificial sun is hoped to speed up the technology in manufacturing solar fuels.
Once the technology is developed with the simulator, the German scientists will turn to the solar system’s sun to harness its energy.
And because it is an artificial sun for now, the rotation of the Earth is not a hindrance and so are the weather conditions.
Johannes Remmel, a German environment minister, believe that this technology is an essential move in achieving renewable energy targets.
He said, “The energy transition will falter without investments in innovative research, in state-of-the-art technologies and in global lighthouse projects like Synlight.”
Sources: Telegraph UK | Phys.org
