{"id":214352,"date":"2025-05-20T13:22:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T18:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/lightweight-plastic-mirrors-drop-cost-of-solar-thermal-energy-by-40"},"modified":"2025-05-20T13:22:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T18:22:03","slug":"lightweight-plastic-mirrors-drop-cost-of-solar-thermal-energy-by-40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/lightweight-plastic-mirrors-drop-cost-of-solar-thermal-energy-by-40","title":{"rendered":"Lightweight plastic mirrors drop cost of solar thermal energy by 40%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C-Qr60mkHqU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Researchers in Australia are working on a way to lower the cost of producing solar thermal energy by as much as 40% with the help of shatterproof rear-view mirrors originally designed for cars.<\/p>\n<p>That could be huge for agriculture and industrial facilities which need large amounts of heat for large-scale processes at temperatures between 212 \u2014 754 \u00b0F (100 \u2014 400 \u00b0C). That addresses food production, drying crops, grain and pulse drying, sterilizing soil and treating wastewater on farms; industrial applications include producing chemicals, making paper, desalinating water, and dyeing textiles.<\/p>\n<p>A quick refresher in case you\u2019re out of the loop: solar thermal energy and conventional solar energy (photovoltaic) systems both harvest sunlight, but they work in fundamentally different ways. Solar thermal setups capture the Sun\u2019s heat rather than its light, use reflectors to concentrate sunlight onto a receiver, and convert solar radiation directly into heat energy. This heat can be used directly for heating buildings, water, or the aforementioned industrial processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers in Australia are working on a way to lower the cost of producing solar thermal energy by as much as 40% with the help of shatterproof rear-view mirrors originally designed for cars. That could be huge for agriculture and industrial facilities which need large amounts of heat for large-scale processes at temperatures between 212 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":718,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1506,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-food","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/718"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}