Rotating solar furnace

A rotary solar furnace is conceptually introduced. In contrast to a conventional solar furnace, where the concentrator is fixed, in a rotary solar furnace both the concentrator and the heliostat rotate in concentric circular path around the concentrator's focus such that at each instant of time they face each other. The angular velocity of this motion equals the angular velocity of the Sun's projection line onto the Earth. In this dynamic solar furnace, the Sun appears always right above the heliostat. Consequently, the heliostat needs only a single-axis elevation tracking to redirect the sunlight along the concentrator's optical axis. This implies that the amount of harvested energy is maximal while the focus remains fixed in space. The daily concentrated radiation energy is analytically computed for each day of the year given the geographical latitude. It is shown the daily energy increase percentage crucially depends on the day of year and geographical latitude. This increase percentage reaches it maximum value in the summer solstice, which is slightly above 140 percent, for instance, in Tehran, Iran.