But sometimes what you need is heat, and concentrated solar does it fine. For some reason not elucidated, nobody seems to be using it for industrial process heat, e.g. making cement.
>February 2, 2022
>For the first time ever, CEMEX and Synhelion successfully connected the clinker production process with the Synhelion solar receiver, producing solar clinker.
>This revolutionary innovation is an initial step to develop fully solar-driven cement plants.
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some papers on solar heat:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03605...
https://www.irena.org/publications/2015/Jan/Solar-Heat-for-I...
We build a big, black bottle with a bunch of nozzles on the end, and focus these mirrors on the nozzly-end of the big, black bottle. You can use these "solar tracking mirrors with AI" to account for the fact that your tower is now going up faster than it normally does.
If you’re after heat, it would be much simpler to just use the steam. Use it as is, as we have for centuries now, or you could transfer it to a higher thermal capacity oil, and if you want some energy, divert it to a steam turbine.
For cement you could presumably use the heat as a preheater, or use the energy for an arc furnace.
first attempt on making solar clinker, from earlier this year