New solar absorber could improve efficiency of solar thermal technology
The following is adapted from a Masdar Institute article by Erica Solomon. A team of researchers at MIT and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology has discovered a low-cost way to significantly increase the amount of solar energy that can be converted into heat, via a device called a solar absorber. This advance should help make sustainable technologies that rely on solar heat more efficient and affordable. “Our research team has developed a simple and cost-effective fabrication technique to create solar absorbers that can harness a greater share of the solar spectrum, thus increasing their efficiencies, while also maintaining low emission levels,” says TieJun Zhang, assistant professor of mechanical and materials engineering at the Masdar Institute, a graduate-level engineering university in the United Arab Emirates. Zhang co-authored the paper that describes this research, which was published this month in the journal Advanced Optical Materials. The work contributes to a larger Masdar Institute-MIT...