The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 28, 1976
Filed:
Jan. 02, 1974
Chen-yen Cheng, Albuquerque, NM (US);
Sing-Wang Cheng, Taipei, CT;
Other;
Abstract
The present invention, introduces (i) a reflector-heat sink panel with myriads of miniature parabolic mirrors and conductive heat collectors and (ii) a flattened focusing mirror. The reflector-heat sink panel has a transparent cover, a multiplicity of miniature parabolic mirrors to focus the Sun's rays into their respective focal regions which also serve as heat sink regions. For an efficient operation, heat generated in these regions is collected and transmitted to a heat transfer surface which is located on the backside relative to the mirror surfaces by conductive heat collecting branches and a conductive main and is transmitted to a heat absorbing medium. Another convenient way is to use the space separating the transparent cover and the mirror surfaces as a conduit to carry a heat absorbing medium and use the surfaces of conductive heat collecting branches and the mirror surface as the heat transfer surface of transmitting heat energy to the heat absorbing medium. Converging lens-heat sink panels which do similar job as that of reflector-heat sink panels are also described. The flattened focusing mirror is a thin multistep mirror which functions as a regular parabolic mirror with a relatively large focal length. What a flattened focusing mirror is to a regular parabolic mirror is about what a Fresnel lens is to a regular lens. method, The invention also introduces a multiple focusing method of accomplishing an even higher degree of concentrating solar energy and ways of storing heat energy at a relatively high temperature. In the multiple focusing method a wide band of the Sun's parallel rays is first reduced into a narrow band of parallel and concentrated rays, which is then reconverged into concentrated bands and harvested by a narrow reflector-heat sink panel. In another embodiment, several narrow bands of parallel and concentrated rays are formed and combined into a large band of parallel and concentrated rays and refocused into a set of very highly concentrated rays.