First Solar Furnace To Recycle Steel Can Melt Metal With Sunshine In 2 Hours

First Solar Furnace To Recycle Steel Can Melt Metal With Sunshine In 2 Hours

In the timepiece capital of the world, time may be running out for carbon-heavy imported steel thanks to a new solar-powered furnace.

Swiss firm Panatere has patented, and has now inaugurated, the world’s first two solar foundries for melting down steel for reuse.

Consisting of 500 concave mirrors mounted on a heliostat that allows them to track the Sun, each is focused into furnace’s chamber until it reaches 2,000 degrees Celsius. Heat like this can melt steel in 1.5 hours, all without any fossil fuels being burned.

They are marvelous micro and macro engineers, but the Swiss import most of the steel they use, including 15,800 metric tons for the watchmaking industry alone.

“There is a real interest in recycling our valuable resources. We want to keep the metal waste from the factories and recycle it locally,” Panatere CEO Raphaël Broye told the Keystone-SDA news agency.

By 2028, the recycling center should be producing 1,000 tons of solar steel per year, added Broye.

Located in the French-speaking canton of Neuchatel, Panatere’s first solar steel bar will be exhibited at the International Watch Museum in La Chaux-de-Fonds, where the foundries operate.

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The project is looking to the future by tweaking their technology to process and recover strategic metals.

There are some 54 foundries for recycling steel worldwide, Swissinfo reports, but only one site that does so with solar power.