TYPES OF SOLAR COOKER
"Food cooked by Solar heat is lovely in appearance, aroma, flavors and taste. It is the ultimate medicine for manly
vigour and glorious skin complexion" India is consider to be land a land of villages and in villages the major portion of
energy i.e. 95% is consumed for cooking. The conventional fuel like coal, kerosene cooking gas, firewood, fire woods cattle during cakes and agricultural wastes, which are in user getting depleted. The conventional fuel which are in used are now reducing day by day as the population is increasing, increasing consumption of fuels. These conventional fuel creating an havoc to the health of a man by polluting the environment. So it seems necessary to developed a cooking system which is non-polluting and the fuel used for cooking on the system should be available in abundant and therefore the birth of solar cooker using sun's radiation which are available in abundant and are non-polluting made the solar cooker to gain its popularity through out the world.
In India the first solar cooker is made by Adam way-back in 1876 using plate mirror arranged in the light sided paramedical structure. Up till now several cookers have been developed by various institution working in the field of non-conventional energy sources. In India there are basically three design of solar cookers developed.
They are,
1) Flute plate box type solar cooker, single or multi reflector type.
2) Multi reflector type solar oven cooker
3) Parabolic concentrator type solar cooker
VARIOUS TYPES OF SOLAR COOKERS
1. ADAM'S SOLAR COOKER
Adam, an Englishman, was the first man in India who started investigating the various solar devices. He was the man responsible for introducing the solar cooking technique in India. He may be called as an inventor of solar cooker in India. He used plate mirror arranged in an eight sided paramedical structure for his solar cooker. It was about 2 ft. 4 inches in diameter at the longer end. The food box was placed in cylindrical copper container enveloped by a glass cover.
2. ABBOT?S SOLAR COOKER
The other man, who worked in field of using solar energy for cooking was ABBOT. He made is a solar cooker in 1939. The cooker was an indirect type, in which there was an parabolic fluid coil was heated to a high temp. (Up to 6000 F) using solar radiation's and then was circulated through a sort of an exchanger, which in task heated the cooking over.
For this, 60 gallons of oil was used for heat transfer and storage. The size of concentrator used for heating the fluid was 4 ft. X 8 ft.
3. BOX TYPE COOKERS
i) SINGLE REFLECTOR TYPE
This is of the simplest solar cooker being developed in India. The maximum no load temp. Attained in this type of cooker was 1600 C. It is developed for convenient and efficient performance. The cooker requires the adjustment after every 30 minutes towards the sun. The food like rice, potatoes, vegetables and dal was satisfactorily cooked in this cooker simultaneously. The food remains warm at the time of dinner.
ii) PARABOLIC REFLECTOR TYPE SOLAR COOKER
This type of cooker is being developed at physical laboratory in New Delhi and at central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur. The cooker consists of a parabolic reflector and the cooking box is placed at the focus of the parabolic. The reflector is made either of small pieces of round glasses pasted on a sheet which is curved in parabolic shape or of this Aluminum sheet. When this cooker was experimented it was observe that when the bottom of the pot is blackened one litre of water boils within 25 to 30 minutes. Under the clear sky condition and wind speed up to 3 to 4 km/hr. While when a wind speed is about 10 to 15 km/hr. The water never reached the boiling point and the maximum temperature record under such conditions was 700 C to 800.
The performance of cooker is very much by the wind speed and the dusty atmosphere. There are always chances of dust falling in the cooking pot and this cooker cannot withstand the pressure. This requires frequent adjustment towards the sun after every 10 to 15 minutes and continuous stirring to prevent scorching of food.
iii) SOLAR OVEN
These cooker are used for cooking purpose. The insulated over has glass windows to admit the solar radiation. Dr. Telka developed an oven which is an insulated box with a cooking vessels of 10 sq. inch fitted towards the sun and adjusted every half an hour as the sun moves during the day. Four slanting reflector of bright aluminum at the sides of the oven reflect the light down through the windows into the oven temperature about 2000 C and higher more obtained
Download your Full Reports for Solar Cooker
