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I wonder how exactly one could use solar to make cement. The Portland cement process requires heating up ingredients to 1500 C. The concentrated solar systems a
by xyzzyz 5y ago
I wonder how exactly one could use solar to make cement. The Portland cement process requires heating up ingredients to 1500 C. The concentrated solar systems as they actually exist do not get anywhere close to that. You could get this high temperature from concentrated solar, but I don’t know how you could effectively transfer the heat to the ingredients: I don’t think that there exists a practical pumping technology that can work with this hot working fluid, as this is literally hot enough to melt steel.
- chemeng 5y agoThere are working fluids (molten salts, liquid metals, etc) that can work in this regime, typically with ceramic piping systems (usually ceramic lined nickel alloy steels) with all ceramic/graphite pumping systems. That said, it’s used in very niche applications and hard to maintain at the scale required for a CSP plant. If you’re after heat, it would be much simpler to just use the steam. Use it as is, as we have for centuries now, or you could transfer it to a higher thermal capacity oil, and if you want some energy, divert it to a steam turbine. For cement you could presumably use the heat as a preheater, or use the energy for an arc furnace.
- ryzvonusef 5y agohttps://www.cemex.com/-/cemex-and-synhelion-achieve-breakthrough-in-cement-production-with-solar-energy https://www.cemex.com/-/cemex-and-synhelion-achieve-breakthr... first attempt on making solar clinker, from earlier this year