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Might be the level of heat required? > Using 38 to 42 of the 212 heliostats — mirror-like devices used to focus sunlight — at the thermal test facility, Ken wa
by AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
Might be the level of heat required?
> Using 38 to 42 of the 212 heliostats — mirror-like devices used to focus sunlight — at the thermal test facility, Ken was able to achieve a temperature above 900 degrees Fahrenheit uniformly across the roasting drum, he said. This is comparable to the temperature of a traditional propane chile roaster.
Your standard oven certainly isn't going to get to 900 degrees Fahrenheit. So maybe 90's drum cookers could roast things like chicken wings, but probably not chiles.
- pavon 4y agoYeah, this appears to be more for fun than anything. Sandia has done concentrated solar research for decades. Roasting chiles is a New Mexico tradition. Hey, lets throw a chile roaster on the top of the solar collector tower! I'm only surprised it wasn't done earlier. Not really a practical or serious technology at this time.
- ianai 4y ago“Ken acknowledged that it’s not feasible to build a tower and field of heliostats just for roasting foods like green chile, coffee or grains. However, he and his colleagues are exploring a much smaller and more modular solar-roasting system that conceivably could be transported to farmers’ markets, grocery stores and chile festivals for roasting small batches of green chile, like the propane-burning steel-drum chile roasters currently use.”
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]