Many industries – production of steel, aluminium and cement being the most obvious – require high heat processes that today can only be achieved commercially using fossil fuels. Paige Bennett at EcoWatch, writing for WEF, describes a new process using solar thermal trapping to reach temperatures of a little over 1,000°C, hot enough to smelt metal. Scientists used semi-transparent materials, including synthetic quartz, to capture sunlight that … [Read more...]