Eco News

A team of students from MIT are working to achieve a cheap prototype for a concentrated solar power system, utilizing already simplified assembly procedures and mass-produced materials. This concentrated solar power system includes advanced materials to increase the efficiency.

Spencer Ahrens is mechanical engineer of the team, and he created a prototype that includes 12-foot-suqare mirrored dish that concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1000, and it could be mass-produced. They have chosen materials based on accessibility and low cost that can be mass produced. Here is how this system works: the students used 10-inch-wide by 12-foot-long strips of lightweight-type bathroom mirror glass mounted on a frame of aluminum tubing constructed to be easily snapped into the right shape. Automatically the dish can track the sun across the sky using photocells mounted on each side of the dish and powered by small electric motors.

The students should take precautions during construction and to wear glasses to protect their eyes from the rays of the sun and especially to wear white clothings. In the near future this system will be ready and will be easily ti built in the developing countries. I am very happy that these students have also created a system that will help us greatly, especially in saving the planet.