Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1917 — POWER FROM THE SUN’S HEAT [ARTICLE]

POWER FROM THE SUN’S HEAT

Scientific Records Show That Efforts to Utilize Old Sol’s Rays Date Back to 1615. , Scientific, records show that attempts to utilize the heat of the sun date back to De Caux, who 1n1615 undertook some solar work, and included the experiment of Buffon, who in 1747 succeeded in setting fire to a tarred plank by solar from a combHwrtfrnr'tif flat mirrors at a distance of 150 feet. He did this to show the possibility of'the legend that Archimedes thus set fire to'the fleet of Marcellus at Syracuse in 212 B. C. . One handicap, so far, has been the fact that the efficiency of solar en-1 gines has not been over 4.32 per cent of the heat value received, while that ( or the ordinary steam engine is about 11.5 per cent, and the gas engine as high as 25.5 per cent. It appears, nevertheless, that with experiments lasting over a number of years through which the coal-fed steam boilers have been improved, sun boilers will be brought to a far better state of efficiency. This view is said to be supported by recent experiments con- t ducted at Meadi on the Nile river, seven miles south of Cairo, during two years’ work. The plant was composed of five 205-foot boilers placed on edge and in the focus of five channel-shaped mltror reflectors of parabolic crosssection, totaling an area of 13,269 feet. The maximum quantity of steam produced was 12 pounds per 100 square feet of mirror surface exposed to the sun, and the maximum thermal efficiency of the mirrors was 40.1 per cent. The maximum output t for an hour was 55.5 brake horsepower, a result about ten times as large as anything previously attained and equal to 63 brake horsepower per acre of land .occupied by the plant.