In Memory of Frank Shuman

[Climatebabes]

You might wonder what such an old picture of such modern technology means. It demonstrates how easily technology is lost. It was taken at the dawn of the 'Oil Era', and becasue of oil, there it stayed..

This post is about the work of Fank Shuman and Charles Vernon Boys. In 1913 they build a parabolic trough power plant in the desert of Egypt near Meadi. His plant produced a total of 55 hp/41 kW steam engine that in turn pumped 6000 gallons of irrigation water per minute (11 meter higher?).

Each collector was 204 feet in length, 13 feet in width and was fitted with a mechanical tracker which kept it automatically tilted to appropriately absorb the sunlight.

Source:'The power of light: the epic story of man's quest to harness the sun by Frank Kryza'

Sherman had originally build flat plate collectors with two mirrors (3 suns) to collect heat for a low temperature self invented ammonia/steam engine. The Design was changed after Shuman hired a critic supported by his investors, Professor Charles Vernon Boys. He was the one that developed the parabolic trough shape, made them tracking, which increased the output temperature. Where Shuman started with an ammonia low temperature heat engine concept, he ended up with high pressure steam.

Sun1913
There was an installation dedicated to this invention and project at the Biennale 2009 in Venice, part of the sun1913 project. There is also a swedish blog about it (Google translated here). The development eventualy was thwarted by world war I and the adoption of oil found in Iran as fuel, as won by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, made into the British Oil Company.

Irony
It is quite an irony that the development of concentrated solar power was stopped by oil first found in Iran.That Oil was quickly confiscated (through nationalization of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company) by the Brittish. Now we know we should not have taken that route..

www.parabolictrough.org.