Soloar Science in Arizona

Solar Science In Arizona

Arizona is now putting its long heritage of solar energy research and application to good use in its program of advancing our state as a candidate for the Solar Energy Research Institute. Early in May of this year the Arizona Legislature passed the bill introduced by Senator James Mack of Tempe, setting up a Solar Energy Research Commission. Governor Raul Castro, aware of the great importance of solar energy to the nation and to Arizona in particular, has enthusiastically endorsed the state effort. He has appointed the members of the Solar Energy Research Commission and named Dr. Robert Handy as Executive Director. Keith Turley, president of Arizona Public Service, was elected chairman of the Commission. The Solar Energy Research Commission will also take an active role in encouraging, supporting, and assisting Arizona institutions, business, industry, universities, and local government, in obtaining federal support for solar energy development and application projects.

In addition to its abundant sunshine, suitable land, and excellent cultural attractions, Arizona is fortunate in having a wealth of solar energy experts, scientists and engineers at our universities and in industry. It is impossible to catalog all of the people and projects but the following descriptions demonstrate the scope and the depth of Arizona's solar capabilities.

Arizona State University

Arizona State University has a head start in solar energy literature. It is heir to the entire collection of more than 8,000 books, technical papers, and other items assembled by the International Solar Energy Society during its stay on campus from 1956 to 1970. Housed in Hayden Library, that collection is the nucleus for a comprehensive solar information clearinghouse. Also of importance to the University is the fact that the ISES plans to bring the headquarters back from Australia to ASU. Thus a heritage of leadership begun almost 20 years ago continues.

Since 1973, hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it Federal grants, have been attracted to ASU by solar scientists determined to turn their technology into a major source of energy for a suddenly fuel-short world. Some two dozen faculty members in engineering, architecture, liberal arts, and business administration have been involved in major research projects aimed at application of solar energy to heating and cooling buildings and to electrical power generation. Primary researchers are Drs. Byard Wood, Charles Backus, Leon Flor-schuetz, Donovan Evans and Dean Jacobson. Work completed since 1973 includes:

LEFT and BELOW

A special "fish eye" camera lens captures the sun and focal point for its reflected rays in the center of a powerful solar concentrator. During an impressive demonstration, the fortyfive foot diameter concentrator, which produces temperatures above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, melted a hole in an aluminum disc within seconds. The solar concentrator was built in Arizona by Goodyear Aerospace for the U.S. Air Force.

A contract (with TRW Systems, Inc., Redondo Beach, California) for determination of technical and economic feasibility of using solar energy to heat and cool buildings from now through the year 2000. This was the first part of a three-phase National Science Foundation (NSF) effort to research, stimulate, and accelerate the use of solar water heating and the heating and cooling of buildings.

Investigation of the feasibility of using a fixed-mirror solar concentrator in electrical power generation.

Experimentation with new methods of producing solar cells.

Construction of a model of a solar residential power system in which solar cells on the roof provide all the energy requirements for the home.

A program to reduce the cost of photovoltaic electricity by utilizing concentrators to focus more sunlight onto each cell. ASU, with Spectrolab, Inc. of Sylmar, California as a subcontractor, is in its second year of a $450,000 project funded by NSF and the Energy Research Development Administration.

Testing of a fixed-mirror solar concentrator built by General Atomic Company with funding from Arizona Public Service and other utilities to see if the device is more economical than movable mirror concentrators.

Completion of design analysis of a system to use sunheated air to drive a turbine which produces electricity.

Evaluation of the amount of heating and cooling equipment needed in any given building by calculating the load versus the response of the system in relation to the building's thermal efficiency.

An energy audit of the State of Arizona for 1972 and 1973, including energy sources and their consumption by residential, commercial, industrial, farming, irrigation, and transportation users.

The performance evaluation of solar water heaters. Such a device was installed last semester on the home of the field lab superintendent at the ASU farm in Tempe.

The first Solar Utilization Now (SUN) Short Course held here last January attracted so many more participants than expected that it was offered a second time in May. Additionally, ASU has solar energy-related regular course offerings in engi-neering, liberal arts, and architecture, including a graduate course in the design of low energy solar-oriented structures, devised by Professor Jeffrey Cook.

A proposal has been made jointly by ASU and Battelle Laboratories of Columbus, Ohio, for an NSF grant to explore the possibility of establishing at ASU an information center to serve the worldwide solar energy community.

Also on ASU's schedule to get more solar energy information to professionals in the field is an International Solar Energy School. The school would accommodate 40 scientists from around the world and qualify them to return to theirown countries and set up solar energy centers.

Besides these extensive research and education efforts in the solar field, ASU is actively interested in applying solar concepts to a number of projects proposed recently by various governmental agencies and private firms. The University has joined with the Del E. Webb Realty and Management Corporation in a proposal to identify and develop incentives to overcome economic, legal and marketing barriers to the instal-lation and use of solar heating and cooling systems.

ASU has Dr. Charles Backus on the Governor's Solar Energy Research Commission to encourage location of the Solar Energy Research Institute in Arizona.

Northern Arizona University

The Physics and Engineering Departments of Northern Arizona University are involved in a joint effort in solar energyresearch. Funding has been received for a summer session this

Among the innovative solar energy ideas being investigated are solar collectors using only wood and glass components; efficiency of volcanic cinders for thermal storage; the break ing down of water into hydrogen and oxygen with solar energy, and subsequent underwater recombination of these gases to produce acoustic energy for geophysical exploration; and studies of ammonia and silver-chloride absorption refrigera tion systems for solar applications.

Test facilities for solar concentrators are under construc tion, and NAU's solar scientists are greatly interested in exploiting Flagstaff's broad environmental range in the testing and demonstration of solar equipment for heating and cooling.

Leaders in the effort are Drs. Wirt Ward, William Delinger, Peter Jenkins, and Bill Davis. Dr. Davis has just been appointed to represent Northern Arizona University on the newly formed Solar Energy Commission.

Lowell Observatory

A. E. Douglass was sent by Percival Lowell from Boston to Arizona in the spring of 1894 to find the best site for an astronomical observatory. After only a month of testing at half a dozen sites by Douglass, it was decided to found the observatory in Flagstaff.

As early as 1902 Lowell reasoned that there should be another planet still further out in the solar system. By intricate mathematical calculations he predicted the location of such a planet. Lowell died in 1916 and it was not until four teen years later that the planet, Pluto, was actually detected.

Important research, using the sun as a source, was carried on in the late thirties and early forties at the Lowell Observa tory by Arthur Adel. He was the first to discover nitrous oxide in the earth's atmosphere the only oxide of nitrogen which occurs naturally in our atmosphere. He also discovered an atmospheric "window" in the infrared region of the spectrum. The use of this window to observe extraterrestrial objects has resulted in many important astronomical discoveries. It is also important in computing the loss of radiation from the earth to outer space. Adel used sunlight to measure the amount of precipitable water above Flagstaff and tabulated its average values in different months of the year. Later he founded the Atmospheric Research Observatory at what is now Northern Arizona University.

Beginning in 1950, the Lowell Observatory initiated a program for monitoring the degree of constancy of the sun. This program was reactivated in early 1972 using Neptune and Titan, the huge satellite of Saturn, as a reflector of sun light.

The program is now being further implemented by accurate measurements of the brightness of the four satellites of Jupiter.

Currently, Observatory Director Dr. John S. Hall is drawing up plans, with the collaboration of scientists at NAU, to use solar, instead of electrical, energy to heat water and portions of the buildings which house telescopes. This project seems ideally suited to the use of solar energy because of climate, insolation, high elevation (7250 feet) and the fact that the greatest need for heat will occur during times of clear weather.

The University of Arizona

Tracing the many roots of solar research at the University of Arizona is a difficult business, but one of the deepest and most impressive of them began decades ago when teenager Marjorie Pettit of Pasadena, California, cooked hot dogs for astronomy student Aden B. Meinel on a solar steam engine her father had built to run his shop lathe. Today she is Marjorie Meinel, a noted expert along with her husband in thefield of solar energy, and she fondly tells of "trapping" her man with the solar cooking, crediting the tiny engine with first sparking the couple's determination to harness the sun. Director of the University's Optical Sciences Center for many years, Aden Meinel got sabbatical leave in 1970 and did something strange for a faculty member: He stayed on campus.

He and Mrs. Meinel, herself a noted scientist, spent the year trying to find out why solar energy never got off the ground. They knew, for example, that the University had operated its Solar Energy Laboratory in the late 1950s. The sun had heated and water had cooled the lab quite successfully. But solar energy wasn't received with much enthusiasm. Those were the days when gasoline was 20 cents a gallon, Arabs weren't boycotting, and the discouraged architect of that first solar facility complained "... it is extremely difficult to obtainfunds to prosecute the work. We assume that a somewhat simi lar situation will prevail during the next 10 years."The Meinels suspected that not only were funds lacking, but also the scientific know-how that would later be produced by the space race of the 1960s. These products of space-age technology they thought might make solar energy feasible not only for heating and cooling, but for generating vast amounts of electricity as well. The Meinels saw, in the work of several University of Arizona researchers, the promise of using special "thin films" to really heat things up.

Here is the problem the Meinels recognized, and one that still faces researchers everywhere: How do you let in the heat from the sunlight you can see, yet prevent the re-radiation of an invisible part of the spectrum called the infrared? The new thin films provided a clue: Use one film that would let the sunlight in and another that would somehow block its depar ture in the infrared range. Armed with that knowledge, theMeinels turned to the matter of producing solar-generated power for the entire country. They came up with the idea of converting a portion of Arizona's western desert into a solar energy farm. Seemingly endless rows of solar collectors