Adhesion and chemical vapor testing of second surface silver/glass solar mirrors

Technical Report · Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 1980

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6919828· OSTI ID:6919828

Dake, L S; Lind, M A

Second surface silvered glass mirrors supplied by four different commercial manufacturers were evaluated for silver-to-glass adhesion and resistance to chemical vapor attack. The mirrors were chemically silvered on identical substrates of low iron float glass. Experiments were performed in order to assess the viability of using adhesion and chemical attack as screening tests for predicting the relative long-term durability of solar mirrors. The results of these tests will be compared at a future time with the survivability of field mirrors deployed in stationary exposure racks at ten locations throughout the United States. The adhesion tests were performed using a commercially-available thin film tensile pull tester in which a stud bonded to the film is pulled and the yield load recorded. Numerous subtleties regarding the selection of the adhesive used to bond the study and the validity of the testing procedure are discussed. Several different methods of normalizing the results were attempted in an effort to reduce the scatter in the data. The same set of samples were exposed to salt spray, water, HCl, H/sub 2/SO/sub 4/, and HNO/sub 3/ vapors and then ranked according to their performance. Visual comparison of tested samples did not yield consistent results; however, definite trends were observed favoring one of the manufacturers. Some SEM/EDX analysis was performed on these mirrors subject to accelerated degradation in order to compare them to mirrors subject to natural degradation. However, insufficient data has been collected to show that any of the tests performed will accurately predict the relative life expectancy of the mirrors in an outdoor environment.

• Research Organization: Battelle Pacific Northwest Labs., Richland, WA (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC06-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 6919828
• Report Number(s): PNL-3575
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
MIRRORS
ADHESION
TESTING
SOLAR REFLECTORS
BONDING
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
GLASS
HELIOSTATS
HYDROCHLORIC ACID
NITRIC ACID
SCREENING
SERVICE LIFE
SILVER
SUBSTRATES
SULFURIC ACID
TENSILE PROPERTIES
VAPORS
WATER
ELEMENTS
EQUIPMENT
FABRICATION
FLUIDS
GASES
HYDROGEN COMPOUNDS
INORGANIC ACIDS
JOINING
MECHANICAL PROPERTIES
METALS
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
SOLAR CONCENTRATORS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT
TRANSITION ELEMENTS
141000* - Solar Collectors & Concentrators