Solar panels offer an ecological alternative for heating water in the industrial and domestic sector and for supporting the heating systems of buildings. Highly effective vacuum tube solar panels make use of aluminium compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) mirrors to collect solar radiation. The company Ritter Solar GmbH & Co KG has succeeded in equip-ping such mirrors with an innovative and affordable coating that prevents corrosion. The Ritter team has developed a procedure based on a combustion processing technology – the »SiOx - combustion chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) - coating«, specifically de-signed for curved surfaces. Silicon compounds are therefore introduced into a flame and the mirror surface is coated by drawing it over the flame plasma.

The coated mirror sheets prove to be of high quality when being exposed to special out-door and climate conditions. Reflexion properties are convincing, even if the mirrors are covered with dew or dirt. The coating meets all optical requirements and is corrosion proof. Thanks to the new coating method the demand for vacuum tube solar panels to be inte-grated in ecological heating systems is expected to rise in a way that could decrease cli-mate-damaging carbon emissions by as much as 110,000 tons within the first five years.

Project Partner
Ritter Solar GmbH & Co. KG
Kuchenäcker 1
72135 Dettenhausen
Telefon: 07157-5359-0
Telefax: 07157-5359-20
info@rittersolar.de
www.rittersolar.de

Cooperation Partners
Paradigma, Karlsbad
www.paradigma.de

Fraunhofer Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE, Freiburg
www.ise.fhg.de/

INNOVENT e. V., Jena
www.innovent-jena.de

SURA Instruments GmbH, Jena
www.sura-instruments.de

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