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This is the Nanoglass project, from the company Nano2 Chile, winner of the innovation tournament to provide cleaning alternatives for heliostats (mega mirrors) that would reduce water consumption by at least 20%. Nanoglass seems to rise to the challenge by far.
Antofa Innova is an initiative of the Antofagasta Regional Productive Development Committee developed by the Innovation Club, which seeks to enhance and promote the development of technological innovations, generating a survey of solutions applied to the industry, through an open innovation strategy that responds to the challenges of the main industries in the region: Mining, Energy, Logistics, Tourism, Water and Agriculture.
As reported by Cerro Dominador on its website, during the second call for this open innovation tournament, they, the first CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) thermosolar plant in Latin America, inaugurated in June of last year , posed one of the challenges in the area of energy. They sought to develop an alternative cleaning system for heliostats (mega mirrors) that would reduce water consumption by at least 20%. Until now, the plant uses trucks with rotating brushes that clean the heliostats with osmosis water. These trucks in eco mode use approximately 45 liters per heliostat, and in cleaning mode (when they are very dirty) they increase their consumption to 100 liters for each one.
After a shortlist of five projects, Nano2 Chile was the winner with its “Nanoglass” project. Nano2 Chile is a company that through the application of nanotechnological products and innovation seeks to generate solutions that incorporate the changes required by the energy and mining industries to increase productivity, competitiveness and validation of their processes in the social, labor and environmental environment. environment in which they work.
The Nanoglass proposal is based on applying a transparent, water-repellent, anti-scratch, anti-static nanomaterial film to the surface of the heliostats, which makes it possible to reduce the use of water by 90% in the dry industrial cleaning process of Long duration. At this moment, the company is carrying out laboratory tests in the city of Calama, in order to apply this technology in a heliostat in the short term and gather information in situ for a couple of weeks to later measure the effectiveness of this solution.
For César Coloma, mechanical and commissioning supervisor at Cerro Dominador, "the nanoprotective film (...) has been successfully tested on other equipment surfaces exposed to dust, so we believe it can have a positive impact on reducing both cleaning cycles and also water consumption from the solar field.
At the end of 2021, it was announced that Cerro Dominador would be one of the 8 companies that will receive financing to carry out pre-investment studies for green hydrogen projects , through a contest promoted by the European Union and the Chilean Agency for International Development Cooperation ( Agcid). |
