A. J. Vazquez, C. Sierra,

CENIM-CSIC, Av. Gregorio del Amo, 8, 28040-Madrid. Spain (UE)
avazquez@cenim. csic. es

Introduction

One field of big interest inside the frame of Solar Energy applications is that of application to materials. A lot of work was done in different groups joined to biog installations. Odeillo, Denver, Tashkent, etc. In most of the cases the work done was on high temperature ceramic materials. In the Denver Institute of DOE more work was done on metallic materials and also in China an UK, several papers on heat treatment of metallic materials, welding, etc. were performed.

Our group start their work on this topic in the ‘90 with large installations such as those of PSA, Almeria (Spain-UE), later with CNRS, Odeillo (France-UE) and IFS, Tashkent (Uzbekistan).

Several works were made also with a simulator consisting in a 7 kW Xenon lamp and more recently we install a Fresnel lens equipment to get surface modification of Metallic Materials (1-3).

The most recent application consist in the combination of Concentrated Solar Energy with this Fresnel equipment with the Self High Temperature Synthesis to produce coatings of intermetallics. In this paper we will describe the basic Fresnel equipment and the application to the SHS to produce coatings [7-9].

The main aspect of the Fresnel CSE equipment is that of price, size a power density. Price is lower, ca. 15.000 €, size is small and power density, in Madrid installation, is enough good, ca. 250 W sq. cm., i. e. 2500 kW sq. m.

All this characteristics makes this equipment suitable to be used in any research institute or university Department of materials because it falls inside the budget of any research group. The advantages of this equipment are clear:

1. — It is an installation that increases the direct power density ca. 4.000 to 5.000 times

2. — The power density achieved is enough high to produce a lot of metallurgical processes

a. — all typical heat treatments used in metallurgy: quenching, tempering, stress relieving, thermal fatigue, etc.

b. — gas-metal reactions, e. g., nitriding of Ti alloys

c. — melting processes such as coating alloying and cladding, welding, etc.

d. — recently SHS is combined to obtain coatings

e. — any other metallurgical process.

3. — It is strong and very easy to control and can be used as a teaching tool to students in the Materials career and as a research tool as we are doing.

4. — It is the best equipment to transmit to all future professionals working in materials the idea that CSE can be used only for heating sanitary water at home, desalinate brackish or sea water, or to produce electricity, etc. but it can be used in very high temperature applications with small installations.

All the work we did in the past is devoted to transmit this idea: SCE can be used in as many metallurgical operations as we can imagine. We have the tool and it is only a matter of imagination to apply it to real applications. But to start is a need that young students know this real and near possibility to their lives, because most of them don’t know large installations exists.

2. — OBJECTIVE