Novel Solar Absorber to Improve Efficiency of Concentrating Solar Power Technology

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://news.masdar.ac.ae/explore-news/stories-by-type/transformation/item/9191-novel-solar-absorber-to-improve-efficiency-of-concentrating-solar-power-technology.html

[font face=Serif]08 June 2016
[font size=5]Novel Solar Absorber to Improve Efficiency of Concentrating Solar Power Technology[/font]

[font size=4]Masdar Institute and MIT Collaboration Produce Innovative Solar Absorber That Can Harness More Sunlight, Enhancing its Sunlight-To-Heat Efficiency[/font]

[font size=3]Masdar Institute faculty are part of a collaborative team of researchers that has discovered a novel way to significantly increase the amount of sunlight that a solar absorber can convert into heat. By converting more of the solar energy that reaches the Earth’s surface into heat in a low-cost way, the solar absorber can help make sustainable technologies that rely on solar heat, like solar thermal technologies, more efficient and affordable.

“Our research team has developed a simple and cost-effective fabrication technique to create solar absorbers that can harness a greater share of the solar spectrum, thus increasing their efficiencies, while also maintaining low emission levels,” said Masdar Institute’s Dr. TieJun Zhang, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.

…

The team’s novel fabrication technique involves patterning a solar absorber with tiny holes with diameters less than 400 nanometers (that’s roughly 200 times smaller than the width of a human hair), cut into the absorber at regular intervals.

The tiny holes penetrate the entire absorber greatly enhancing the range of solar energy that can be absorbed. Close to 90% of the all the wavelengths of light that reach Earth’s surface are absorbed by the nano-hole patterned absorber. Unlike traditional solar absorbers, this absorber requires very little material and consists of only two layers: a semiconductor film and a reflective metallic layer, with a total thickness of 170 nanometers.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adom.201600078

[WhiteTara]

1. That's a big step in solar!

[Kelvin Mace]

2. The trick is to make it commercially viable

It has to work outside the lab, be cheap to produce, and not toxic to the environment.

I see these type of press releases all the time, but few ever amount to anything.

[JonathanRackham]

3. I have faith.

Once upon a time compact fluorescent lights were overpriced and not exactly appealing for color quality. Some good products out there now. The funny thing is they're practically as obsolete as incandescent bulbs and LEDs are doing the same thing.

Look at the finger tip computing technology we now have on our cell phones alone.

[Kelvin Mace]

4. Florescent lighting had been over a half a century

before they figured out how to miniturize it into individual lights. Then it was just getting economies of scale to make them price competetive.

LEDs had been around 40 years before we figured out how to create lightbulbs. Again, them it was a matter of getting the manufacturing process right so mass production would drive the price down.

For years I read articles about how these products were just around the corner, but it was decades gefore they actually came to market.

Yes, I have faith in tech, but also a realistic time scale is required.