To advance research in its three Themes, the PROMES Laboratory implements and develops experimental means in the following key areas :
Solar furnaces and concentrating solar systems
The PROMES-CNRS solar installations in Odeillo offer a range of high and very high flux solar furnaces, capable of producing very high temperatures (over 3000°C).
The Themis solar power plant
Thémis is a tower power plant of 5000 kW lit by 107 heliostats. It is owned by the Conseil Départemental des Pyrénées Orientales : Thémis Solaire Innovation (TSI).
The experiments of the European projects Next-CSP and POLYPHEM, led by the PROMES laboratory, are taking place in the Thémis power plant.
Solar reactors and enclosures
Many reactors have been designed by the laboratory and have been, or are still used on MWSFs and MSSFs
Characterization of the solar resource of the site (weather station)
The experiments carried out in the solar furnace of Mont-Louis and then in Odeillo showed that a precise exploitation of the results required the knowledge of the solar radiation. For that, successively, the two sites were equipped with various meteorological sensors such as pyranometers or pyrheliometers.
High temperature measurement
The control of solar processes requires the control of solar illumination and temperatures.
The particularities of solar furnaces – very high temperatures, parasitic solar reflections, concentrated fluxes, optical pyrometry – require specific means of measurement.
