Standards Development

Scope

This document specifies laboratory test methods to assess the durability of silvered float-glass reflectors with high technical performance to be used in concentrating solar technologies. The reflectors under the scope of this standard are composed by a float-glass substrate and a reflecting silver layer, which is protected by a thin copper layer and an anticorrosive paint system composed by a base and a top coating, and an optional intermediate coating.

This standard defines multiple accelerated aging tests on reflector samples of size of 10 cm × 10 cm or larger. It defines the measurement methods to determine the degradation parameters used for assessment and the acceptance criteria of the accelerated aging tests.

Annex A of this standard outlines the procedure to apply this standard to reflector types of different composition than the silvered float-glass reflectors described above.

Annex B provides information how to roughly correlate the measured degradation of selected accelerated aging tests with outdoor exposure in different environments. These correlations are strictly limited to silvered float-glass reflector types with the abovementioned layer stack, since differing coating types are likely to introduce unforeseen degradation modes, which might not be triggered under the proposed testing conditions.