Instead of burning coal or oil to produce cement or steel, in the future solar energy could be used for this purpose.
Instead of burning coal or oil to produce cement or steel, in the future solar energy could be used for this purpose. Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a thermal trap that can absorb concentrated sunlight and deliver heat at over thousand degrees Celsius.
The production of cement, metals and many chemical commodities requires extremely high temperatures of over a thousand degrees Celsius. At present, this heat is usually obtained by combusting fossil fuels: coal or natural gas, which emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. Heating with renewable electricity is not an alternative, as this would be inefficient at these high temperatures. Although much of our economy and society will need to become carbon neutral in the coming decades, these industrial processes are likely to continue to be powered by fossil fuels for the near future. They are considered difficult to decarbonise.
Read more at: ETH Zurich
The main component of the thermal trap is a cylinder made of quartz. In the experiments, it reached a temperature of 1050 degrees Celsius and glowed at this heat. (Photo Credit: ETH Zurich / Emiliano Casati)
