Concentrated Solar Energy for Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Energy is essential for almost all of the great challenges and opportunities that humankind faces today. However, energy is the main contributor to climate change, and accounts for around 60% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2015, all of the United Nations Member States accepted the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, an opportunity for countries and their societies to take action so as to improve the lives of all of the world's inhabitants. In this sense, one of the targets of the Agenda is to, by 2030, substantially increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix, and to achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.

In general, the processes of the synthesis and transformation of materials demand an extraordinary energy input in order to reach the high temperature required to complete the different chemical and physical reactions involved. This energy requirement is mainly provided from fossil fuels, with the consequent environmental costs derived from the high emissions of greenhouse gasses. Thus, nowadays, the level of concentration of CO₂ into the atmosphere exceeds of 400 ppm.  During the last decades, studies have been carried out to reduce the high level of CO₂ emissions by developing new high-temperature processes.  A large number of technologies are available for producing heat from renewable resources, but many of them have technological limits in terms of the maximum temperature that can be achieved. Nevertheless, concentrating solar thermal radiation is a very promising renewable energy resource for the processes requiring temperatures of about 500 °C and above.

For this Special Issue on “Concentrated Solar Energy”, researchers can report their findings on the application of concentrating solar thermal radiation to the synthesis, transformation, and treatment (melting, sintering, reduction, etc.) of materials (metals, alloys, steel, glass, ceramics, cement, composites, etc.). Given your reputed experience in this field, and the outstanding impact of your previous publications, we would very much appreciate your contribution in this Special Issue of ChemEngineering.

Dr. Aurora López-Delgado
Dr. Maximina Romero
Dr. Isabel Padilla
Guest Editors

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• concentrated solar energy (CSE)
• materials treatment with solar energy
• synthesis of materials with solar energy
• transformation of materials with solar energy
• application of CSE for the treatment of waste