Renewable sources are playing a growing role in meeting our energy needs, but one place where they have continued to fall short is in industrial processes that require extreme heat.  These include the cement, steel, and glass industries, among others.  These industries account for a significant amount of CO2 emissions because the most effective way to reach the necessary temperatures continues to be combustion of fossil fuels.  The cement industry alone accounts for 7% of global emissions and the need for cement continues to grow.

A previously stealthy startup company backed by Bill Gates and fellow

billionaire Soon-Shiong has made a breakthrough in the area of using solar

energy to achieve high temperatures.  The

company, called Heliogen, has created a solar oven that is capable of

generating heat above 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, which is enough for high-temperature

industrial processes.

The Heliogen technology uses concentrated solar power to generate

heat.  Concentrated solar power uses

arrays of mirrors to reflect sunlight and focus it to a single point.  That technology is not new;  there are systems that use it to produce

electricity and, to some extent, heat for industry.  But it could not achieve high enough

temperatures for producing cement or steel.

The new system uses computer vision software, automatic edge detection

and other sophisticated technologies to focus the sun’s rays far more finely

than ever before and thereby generate far higher temperatures at the focal

point.

Heliogen is now focused on demonstrating how the technology can be

used in a large-scale application, such as cement-making.  The selling points to industry are that not only

will there be no emissions generated, but that the fuel needed to obtain their

extreme heat will be free.

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Secretive energy startup backed by Bill Gates achieves solar breakthrough

Photo courtesy of Heliogen.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.