Parabolic Mirrors for Generating Steam

Need more info buckaroo!

First question: what volume of steam at what pressure (per hour)?

Chandu, makes Solar Cookers in Bangalore. You could search CR4 for his name, and see if he is willing to disclose any of his secrets.

His cook food in a pot set in a holder at point of focus.

There was an informative and entertaining episode on heating with mirrors on Mythbusters. Get a copy or contact the studio. Sounds like an interesting project.

Do a search on CR4 - there's a very long thread on the use of solar power and concentrating mirrors on here...somewhere. Sorry, no time to search myself.

"Sorry, no time to search myself."

If you feel strongly about it, perhaps someone else, with more time, could search you.

if you take the normal small sized dishes used for direct tv, and cover it with about 1 inch square pieces of mirror, the focal point will get hot enough to ignite paper and dry wood. If you take a 3ft across old satalite dish and do the same with 1 inch mirrors, the focal point in the sun is hot enough to burn through an aluminum can. I have done both. Wear very good uv protective glasses messing with this in the sun. Just the reflection off the paper will hurt your eyes a bit. If you catch the reflection off the mirrors, you can really get some eye damage.This can also be accomplished with a flat piece of board covered with mirrors. you have to put some adheasive, like silicone along one edge of each mirror, and a screw through the board behind each mirror. then use the screws to adjust each mirror to reflect into the same spot. I think the guy thad has those plans online called it a flat or flat plate solar concentrator or reflector. His was 4x4 feet, and would burn right through an aluminum can. Mythbusters hosted students from MIT to hold a few hundred mirrors, focoused on a wood and pine pitch boat out in the water. I think the students were able to get the boat smoking, but it didnt light on fire. To ignite wood or paper, you need about 300 mirrors, focused in the same spot on a sunny day. 451f, by the way, is the temp paper ignites at, so steam is easy. The hard part is figuring out how many you need to make useful steam. The 1901(?) worlds fair had a 50 hp steam engine generating power from a parabolic dish covered with mirrors. I think the dish was about 10 feet across. I have no idea what size the individual mirrors were.

Size is a constraint for me could you please tell me the minimum possible requirement of a parabolic mirror to produce fairly dry steam.

You can get dry steam even with smallest reflector that can be made with satelite dish antenna that is about 2ft diameter, but the quantity would be very less. The design would depend on the quantity of steam, temperature and pressure required.

YES! But.....

Unfortunately-- there are an infinite number of possible answers to your question. You have not specified any boundary conditions with which to constrain the solution space, which then expands to infinity in all directions.