Mouchot's solar engine
Motor solar de Mouchot
- Date
- 1878 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France
- Credited to
- Augustin Mouchot
- Field
- Matter & energy
What it is
At the Paris Universal Exhibition, Mouchot exhibited a parabolic solar collector able to drive a small steam engine and even make ice, publicly demonstrating that concentrated solar energy could replace coal. Decades later, Frank Shuman would scale the idea up industrially with a solar pumping plant in Egypt (1913).
What it led to
- Concentrated solar thermal power plants
- Solar water pumping for irrigation (Frank Shuman, Egypt, 1913)
Built on
- Saussure's solar hot box1767
- Greenhouse effect in solar collectors (Horace de Saussure)