Odeilloisk Solar Oven

The furnace is located in Font-Romain-Odeillo-Via, in the department of the Pyrenees-Oriental, Languedoc-Roussillon region, in the south of France. The terrain was chosen because:

• time and quality of directed sunlight more than 2500 hours per year;
• purity of its atmosphere (high altitude and medium low humidity).

Solar Power Station and the Mont Luis Solar Furnace are located nearby.

The principle used is the concentration of rays reflected by mirrors (there are 9600 of them). The sun's rays are captured by the first set of redirected mirrors located on the slope, and then sent to the second series of mirrors (“hubs”), which are located in the parabola. Consequently, they converge in the direction of the ring target at the top of the central tower, which is only 40 cm in diameter. This is equivalent to an energy concentration of “10,000 suns.”

• Temperatures above 3500 ° C can be obtained in a few seconds.
• This furnace provides a quick change in temperature and, therefore, allows you to study the effect of thermal shocks;
• There are no polluting elements (combustible gas, waste, etc.), since the object to be examined is heated only by radiation;

Research areas also extend to the aerospace industry. The experiments can be in conditions of high chemical purity.

The French chemist Felix Tromba and his team succeeded in Medon in 1946 when, when they first experimented with a DCA mirror, they showed that they reached high temperatures very quickly and in a very clean environment, taking into account highly concentrated sunlight. The goal was to melt the ore and extract highly pure materials for the manufacture of new and improved refractories.

To achieve this goal and test various possibilities, the first solar furnace was built in Mont-Louis in 1949. Several years later, on the model of the Mont-Louis furnace and the results obtained, a solar furnace was built the size of almost the industrial Odeilo. The construction of the Great Odeillo Solar Furnace lasted from 1962 to 1968, with the goal of commissioning in 1970.

Strong proponents of solar energy and the subsequent oil shock of 1973 led researchers in the Odeillo solar furnace to work on converting solar energy into electricity in the second half of the 1970s.

Since 1990, an information center open to the public is also present on the site, regardless of the CNRS laboratory.

Designed for young and old, Héliodyssée allows you to explore solar and other types of energy (other types of renewable energy used at home) with fun, as well as the work of researchers from CNRS in the field of energy, environment, materials for space, materials of the future.

• Solar complex "Sun"

• G. Oladlet and A. L. Pyube (France), “Experimental study of the cells of a solar receiver for solar heating of high-temperature gas,” Journal of Applied Physics, No. 17, 1982, pp. 563-568
• Bernard Spinner (France), “Building a Center for Solar Energy Research and Experimentation,” CNRS History Journal, No. 5, 2001
• Databases Merimet (France), Ministry of Culture of France