Abstract:
Solar cookers are heat exchanging devices which can used for converting solar energy to cooking,
replacing traditional way of cooking. The problems to consider while designing solar cookers
which can be address to the rural society are longer cooking time, unable to cook indoors, acquiring
of attended tracking systems, and high initial and operational cost. This thesis work aims to design,
fabricate, and investigate a simple size solar cooker based on solar air heater as a heat energy
source.
A flat plate type solar air collector having size of, L × W × D, 1 m × 0.57 m × 0.1 m is used for
collecting solar energy and convert to heat energy. For the prevention of the heat loss, 4 cm thick
fiberglass material was used and other components are designed. Two kinds of tests were
conducted for investigating the performance of the cooker, stagnation and sensible tests. From the
three days of stagnation tests conducted, the maximum absorber plate temperature achieved were
92.6
0
C, 93.8
0
C, and 94.2
0
C for day 1, day 2, and day 3 of stagnation test respectively, with
respective standard stagnation temperature (SST) of 45.61
0
C, 45.54
0
C, and 46.14
0
C. The
maximum air temperature recorded are for day 1 88.3
0
C at 12:40PM, for day 2 89.6
0
C at 12:40PM,
and for day 3 89.9
0
C at 12:20PM The first figure of merit for the cooker is 0.075 which lies in
grade B performing cookers. Water heat up test was also performed and the performance
parameters were comparatively insufficient. The maximum water temperature measured from two
days of sensible test was 67.5
0
C around 12:30PM in which the water didn’t reach its boiling point.
The cooking power is calculated for sensible tests and standard cooking power is plotted against
water-ambient temperature difference. From the two days’ tests, the maximum and minimum
calculated cooking power are 42.5W and 2.09W respectively. Cooking of rice were also conducted
for two consecutive days, and the rice was not able to be fully cooked.
Key words: Indirect Solar Cooker, Solar Air Heater, Flat plate solar collector, Performance
parameters