Mechanical Engineering / Sustainable Energy Session:

Title:            Design, fabrication and performance analysis of solar cooker for night cooking
Authors:       Arunachala U. C., Anuj Jhalaria, Sheikh Mashhood
Abstract:      Solar cooking and water heating are widely accepted at domestic and commercial level as clean and green energy applications. Referring to the different collector designs, it has been concluded that cost wise box type cooker is better and Compound Parabolic Collector (CPC) is better when cooking time is considered. Hence it was planned to design, fabricate and analyze a type of cooker which is not subjected to tracking but can harness maximum solar energy throughout the day. From the analytical and experimental results, the energy produced is far above the energy required to cook 500 gm of rice. There is a noticeable difference between analytical and experimental values of oil temperature due to variation in analytical and measured solar radiation level. The CPC based solar cooker setup is tested for six consecutive days. The maximum oil temperature is noted to be 110˚C. During off-sunshine hours, the oil temperature drop was around 35˚. Due to the inclement weather and inherent limitations, the system couldn’t attain maximum efficiency. It is observed that during afternoon, oil temperature rise is sufficient to cook rice and the oil temperature during late evening is sufficient for food warming.

Keywords:   Compound Parabolic Collector, Oil Storage Tank, Energy Content, Cooking Time
Pages:         406-412

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