Abstract

A new high flux solar furnace facility has been developed in Mexico. It is located in Temixco, Morelos, Mexico and in its first phase of development consists of a heliostat of 36 square meters (6 m by 6 m), a shutter made of stainless steel blades 6.2 m by 6.2 m, and a multifaceted concentrator of 211 spherical mirrors with an equivalent focal length of 3.64 m. In order to set the HFSF in operation, all the mirrors were aligned, the control system was developed and tested, the heliostat was aligned and its tracking movement tested. The purpose of this paper is to present the new facility and its first results in the evaluation of its capacities. The results show that the optical error is less to 3 mrad and the calculations indicates that the average flux could be higher than 5,000 suns and the facility can reach temperatures as high as 3406º C.