Felix Trombe (1906–1985) was a French

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

.Jean-Jacques Amigo, "Trombe (Félix)", in Nouveau Dictionnaire de biographies roussillonnaises, vol. 3 Sciences de la Vie et de la Terre, Perpignan, Publications de l'olivier, 2017, 915 p. () He was born in Nogent and died in Ganties. He is best known for his pioneering work in

passive solar building design In passive solar building design, windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, reflect, and distribute solar energy, in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer. This is called passive solar design because, unli ...

with the

Trombe wall A Trombe wall is a massive equator-facing wall that is painted a dark color in order to absorb thermal energy from incident sunlight and covered with a glass on the outside with an insulating air-gap between the wall and the glaze. A Trombe wall is ...

, which bears his name. He is also credited with hypothesizing

passive daytime radiative cooling Passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC) is a renewable cooling method proposed as a solution to global warming of enhancing terrestrial heat flow to outer space through the installation of thermally-emissive surfaces on Earth that require zero ...

in 1967.

Mont-Louis Solar Furnace

In 1949 Trombe directed the construction of the experimental 50 kW

Mont-Louis Solar Furnace The Mont-Louis Solar Furnace is an experimental solar furnace - a solar thermal energy facility that was built in 1949. It was the first facility of its kind in the world, and was a precursor of the Odeillo Solar Furnace. It provides a thermal p ...

in the

Pyrénées-Orientales Pyrénées-Orientales (; ca, Pirineus Orientals ; oc, Pirenèus Orientals ; ), also known as Northern Catalonia, is a department of the region of Occitania, Southern France, adjacent to the northern Spanish frontier and the Mediterranean Sea. ...

for high temperature experiments in physics and chemistry. In 1962, a 1000 kW

solar furnace A solar furnace is a structure that uses concentrated solar power to produce high temperatures, usually for industry. Parabolic mirrors or heliostats concentrate light (Insolation) onto a focal point. The temperature at the focal point may rea ...

was built in

Odeillo Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via (; ca, Font-romeu, Odelló i Vià), or simply Odeillo, is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales and Cerdagne near the Spanish border in the south of France. It comprises the villages of Odeillo and Via, as well as Font-Ro ...

References

20th-century French engineers Solar building designers 1906 births 1985 deaths {{France-engineer-stub