Melting Steel Using Solar Radiation!!

A group of MIT students are now vaporizing wood and can potentially melt steel using just the sun. Their goal is cheap and efficient solar power.

Their solar concentrator, a 12-foot by 12-foot mirror( 3.65 m by 3.65 m), is made of off-the-shelve metal frames fitted with bent mirrors that concentrates the sun's light on a single spot.
These students started a new company, RawSolar, to sell their design.
"The first goal is to create a heat source that is cheaper than natural gas or oil," said Matt Ritter, one of the MIT students and Public Relations Manager for RawSolar. "An eventual application is electricity generation."
The mirrors and frames are readily available and cheap making the project very cost effective.
The company's first goal is to create 'wet steam' by boiling water at 250 degrees Celsius. This steam can be used for various commercial and industrial applications.
The MIT team calculated that this disk can generate temperatures up to 1,300 degrees C, high enough to melt steel !!
Focusing sun light to generate heat is easy, turning the heat into energy is the hard part.
To turn this high temperature into energy, three methods could be applied:
1-Using Sterling engine: heating a gas to drive a piston and generate electrical current.
2-Steam Turbines: Using steam to turn a turbine.
3-High-concentration photovoltaic: Focusing sunlight onto a small photovoltaic cell that can convert high concentrations of sunlight into electricity.

The last choice looks the most promising since using high efficiency solar cells could become more affordable.
Whatever the outcome is this MIT team has certainly made a break through in concentrated solar radiation.
Via Discovery Channel