CIEMAT's SOLAR CHEMISTRY GROUP

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The Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (www.ciemat.es) is a Public Spanish Organism owned by the Ministry of Education and Science. Its work deals with the research and technological development on energy (including Renewable Energies) and environmental related subjects. The Solar Energy Programme of CIEMAT includes the PSA -Plataforma Solar de Almería- (www.psa.es) as main national research centre. Formally considered as a European Large Scientific Installation, the Plataforma Solar de Almería is also the largest European Laboratory for solar energy applications. The PSA participates actively in demonstrative applications of different solar technologies, at national and international levels, with the main objective to improve the technology cost and efficiency and make possible the efficient collection of solar energy for electricity production, development of chemical applications, development and testing of materials under extreme conditions, desalination, etc.

In the field of use of solar radiation for water treatment, our research group is actually working on an Investigation and Development Program in collaboration with different organisms and universities. Our knowledge about solar detoxification systems and processes at pilot and pre-industrial scale is backed up by more than 15 years of research activity. This wide research work has been recently rewarded by the Jury Award of the "European Grand Prix for Innovation Awards" (December, 11th, 2004). This group has been involved in the 18 European projects, all of them related to environmental technologies. Close collaborations with highly recognized international research and academic institutions have been established since several years ago. At present several European projects are running in collaboration with different European Institutes and Universities.

This group has been involved also in various contracts with private companies due to its expertise in environmental technologies. Besides, our group has collaborated with a large number of institutions in Spain (University of Almería, University of Málaga, Institute of Materials of Barcelona, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Institute of Materials of Sevilla). This let to perform several doctoral works (6 Doctoral Thesis concluded and 4 running). As well as, the solar chemistry group is closely linked to the work of private companies like ECOSYSTEM and AO SOL, through different European Projects.

Research team of PSA-CIEMAT Solar Chemistry Group:
Dr. Julián Blanco Gálvez (Head)
Dr. Sixto Malato Rodríguez (Staff)
Dr. Manuel Ignacio Maldonado Rubio (Researcher)
Dr. Pilar Fernández Ibáñez (Researcher)
Mr. Diego Alarcón Padilla (Researcher)
Dr. Wolfgang Gernjak (Researcher)
Ms. Isabel Oller Alberola (PhD.)
Mr. Leonidas Pérez Estrada (PhD.)
Ms. Cosima Sichel (PhD.)
Mr. Agustín Carrión (tech. Assistant)

Solar Chemistry Facilities


Compound Parabolic Concentrators (CPCs) are a very good option for Solar Detoxification applications These static collectors, constituted by aluminium reflective surface formed by an involute around a cylindrical reactor, have the best optics for low concentration systems (better performance of solar photocalytic systems)