Let There Be Light: Germans Switch on 'Largest Artificial Sun' (theguardian.com)

German scientists are switching on "the world's largest artificial sun" in the hope that intense light sources can be used to generate climate-friendly fuel. From a report: The Synlight experiment in Julich, about 19 miles west of Cologne, consists 149 souped-up film projector spotlights and produces light about 10,000 times the intensity of natural sunlight on Earth. When all the lamps are swivelled to concentrate light on a single spot, the instrument can generate temperatures of around 3,500C -- around two to three times the temperature of a blast furnace. "If you went in the room when it was switched on, you'd burn directly," said Prof Bernard Hoffschmidt, a research director at the German Aerospace Center, where the experiment is housed in a protective radiation chamber. The aim of the experiment is to come up with the optimal setup for concentrating natural sunlight to power a reaction to produce hydrogen fuel.

Comments

"Accident" waiting to happen

[volodymyrbiryuk]

"Hey Helmut I bet you can't last longer in there without sunscreen than on that beach in Spain last year." Helmut: "Hold mein bier."

Re:"Accident" waiting to happen

[codeButcher]

Y'all have it all wrong though. There is no equivalent to the American, semi-inebriated uttering "hold my beer" ("beer", when referring to the stuff made in the USA, should be in air quotes) in German, and for the following reasons:
* German beer is still proper beer full of natural goodness, not so dissimilar to that effervescent multivitamin some people like to pop into a glass of water and drink daily for good health. Only better tasting and more effective.
* Germans grow up on beer. They drink it at breakfast instead of coffee or cacao. They have beer dispensers instead of water coolers at the office.
* Germans don't get drunk. After consuming copious amounts of beer, their noses may turn red, but that's it.

Source: I'm German myself. Also, if some humor-deficient mensch claims that Germans have no sense of humor, they may just find out how little humor I do have.

Re:To Make Hydrogen Fuel?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Another inane comment from the peanut gallery. While there is Hydrogen on the surface of the moon are you mistaking this with Helium-3? Otherwise your question makes no sense as if you want to refine hydrogen today the cheapest way to do it has nothing to do with space.

3500 degrees

[tinkerton]

That's a lot really. What kind of lights are these?

The summary obfuscates this but whatever the amount of incandescent bulbs you are focusing on the same spot, you cannot get a temperature that is higher than the filament in the bulb (the black box temperature of the bulb). And 3500 is a lot for an incandescent bulb.
Maybe it's another kind of lighting then. Like a combination of different LEDs.

Re:3500 degrees

[tinkerton]

Another example: it's not possible to use mirrors to concentrate sunlight so that it can heat something up to more than 5500 degrees.

Re:3500 degrees

[Stoertebeker]

Likely arc lamps

Re:3500 degrees

[lorinc]

Because when you mix 2 things at temperature T, it doesn't make a thing at temperature 2T. Don't mistake temperature for energy.

Re:3500 degrees

[Anonymous Coward]

xkcd explains it well: https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/

Re:3500 degrees

[Anonymous Coward]

To sum it up, quoting from that link: Lenses and mirrors work for free; they don't take any energy to operate. If you could use lenses and mirrors to make heat flow from the Sun to a spot on the ground that's hotter than the Sun, you'd be making heat flow from a colder place to a hotter place without expending energy. The second law of thermodynamics says you can't do that. If you could, you could make a perpetual motion machine.

Re:3500 degrees

[BenBoy]

you cannot get a temperature that is higher than the filament in the bulb

... as explained here: Fire from Moonlight

Re:3500 degrees

[dmatos]

A bit of digging found another article that lists the type of lamp used.

They're xenon short-arc lamps.

Re:3500 degrees

[Agent0013]

But that is the light from one sun. The way I understood that "what-if" was the process has to work in reverse. The focused light at the point has to be traceable back to where the light came from. But when you shine two light bulbs at a sheet of paper, you are not using lens to focus one bulb, you have two of them on top of each other. If you stand in front of two infrared heaters you will get warmer than if in front of one of them. But they aren't trying to make their heat hotter than their source by magnifying it in the "what-if" way that does not work.

Re:Obvious statement is obvious

[fisted]

Ist just how ze krauts talk. "directly" (direkt) is used in the meaning of 'immediately' here.

Re:How about actual sunlight instead of projectors

[gman003]

640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Re:Nope

[Carewolf]

optimal setup for concentrating natural sunlight

But it's not. Sunlight is for all intents and purposes collimated due to the extreme distance of its source. While these lamps can be "swivelled (sp?) to concentrate light on a single spot", that will tell you little about the setup applicable for use with sunlight.

Have you heard about mirrors? And mirrors on swivels?

See also Solar power towers

Re:How about actual sunlight instead of projectors

[tinkerton]

... Edison said, as he presented the first commercial lightbulb. It glowed slightly red in the dark.

Re:Nope

[Nemyst]

A parabolic reflective dish can focus collimated light into a single point. It's been around for millennia.

Re:what a disappointment

[Tablizer]

I know this is not fusion, but on that note, If Europe gets fusion to a practical level, it would be a yuuuuge embarrassment to the US, comparable to losing the space race. Plus, Europe will probably charge us for related patents, or at least they should: they shouldered most of the cost while we collectively denied global warming and bowed down to the Oil Gods.