Solar energy can be suited to tasks such as producing pure metals from their ores by using concentrated sunlight to heat reactants to high enough temperatures to initiate reactions. The PI plans to investigate the use of solar energy as process heat to produce zinc and carbon monoxide from zinc oxide using titanium trioxide. A two step high temperature process is planned: reduction of zinc oxide (ZnO) with titanium sesquioxide (Ti2O3) to produce zinc and titanium dioxide (TiO2) followed by reduction of TiO2 back to Ti2O3 by reaction with carbon. He plans to determine the overall reaction rate for the conversion of zinc oxide to metallic zinc using an electric furnace as the reactor. For the cases where zinc evolves in the gas phase, the reactants experience a weight loss which will be followed with a microbalance and recorded with a data acquisition system. This data will be used to establish the rate. When zinc forms as a liquid, the products will be quenched after specified run times. A plot of zinc yield versus time will be used to determine the rate.***
