Solar Furnace
The great thing about solar energy is that it can be used for a many different things. Just within your home you can use solar power to run your lighting, heating, stove, washer and much more. You can even run a solar furnace off of solar energy.
Solar power can be used in many extraordinary ways. One of the most majestic applications of solar thermal energy is the solar furnace. These are enormous installations that make use of solar thermal energy for extreme high heat processes (temperatures as high as 3500oC/6330oF). The technology is wonderful for high temperature researchers; the heat produced is very clean with no pollutants. There are a variety of uses for this energy, such as hydrogen fuel production, foundry applications and high temperature materials testing. Thus science can advance without enormous energy bills. Research can take place in areas previously deemed too costly or polluting to be worthwhile. The temperature at the focal point may reach 3,500 °C (6,330 °F), and this heat can be used to generate electricity, melt steel, make hydrogen fuel or nanomaterials.
How it works
The Solar Furnace system is a turn key solar heating, ventilation and domestic hot water solution. It can provide whole house heating, ventilation and hot water supply for a home from 0-3000 sq ft. The system works by providing fresh solar air ventilation to an integrated HRV inside the solar hydronics furnace with solar hot water and an on demand tankless hot water system. This efficient combination delivers effective solar heating (up to 50 000 BTU/hr solar energy) and natural gas or propane whole home heating system. Radiant floor and swimming options can be added to the system as well. The Solar Furnace system can reduce your heating and electricity bills (ECM motor in furnace standard). It can provide savings from 20% up to 60%.
Benefits
- Always leads to a direct reduction of primary energy consumption
- Can be combined with nearly all kinds of back-up heat sources
- Has the highest potential under the Renewable energy-technologies and does not rely on finite resources.
- Does not lead to a significant increase in electricity demand, which could imply substantial investments to
- Increase power generation and transmission capacities
- Available nearly everywhere.
- Prices are highly predictable, since the largest part of them occur at the moment of investment, and therefore
- Does not depend on future oil, gas, biomass, or electricity prices
- Solar collectors absorb the energy from the sun 3-4 times more efficiently than solar cells.
- The price of solar collectors is about 3 times less than the price of solar cells.
- The life-cycle environmental impact of ST systems is extremely low.
- Sunmark collectors are 99 % recyclable.
- A solar collector also generates energy on cloudy days.