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Solar cookers—cheap technology with high ecological benefits

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Abstract

This study discusses the quality and quantity of energy used for cooking in Costa Rica and in the world as a whole, and then compares the advantages and limitations of solar ovens with conventional firewood and electric stoves. The payback period of a common hot box type solar oven, even if used 6–8 months a year, is around 12–14 months. Even if only 5 percent of persons facing fuel shortages in the year 2005 use solar ovens, roughly 16.8 million tons of firewood will be saved and the emission of 38.4 million tons of carbon dioxide per year will be prevented.

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    The conventional wisdom is that solar appliances such as solar cookers reduce the use of traditional biomass fuels thus alleviating forest degradation and emissions of harmful GHGs. In this regard, a study by Nandwani in 1996 had projected that, if only 5% of the people who faced fuel shortage in Costa Rica in the year 2005 were to use solar box cookers; about 16.8 million tonnes of fuelwood could have been saved from the use of the solar cookers [101]. This amounts to 38.4 million tonnes of CO2e emission potentially prevented by using solar energy.

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    Therefore, to answer the question of sustainability regarding heat curing, solar energy can be the possible input of a dedicated heat curing system for geopolymer binders. During last two decades, successful efforts have been made in developing solar ovens for domestic purposes [24,17]. The principal aim of this research study was to develop environmental friendly curing regime for producing high-performance GP matrix.

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    Apart from the serious consequences of charcoal production regarding deforestation, the burning of charcoal produces a substantial amount of carbon monoxide. Charcoal as energy source is a relevant environmental issue as it is especially used in urban areas and, with increased rates of urbanisation, the production and consumption of charcoal are likely to increase [38,35]. While the environmental argument above is well-represented in the literature, the economic argument for using SCs is more applicable to the end-users [39–,41,35,42].

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Preliminary report was presented as Poster at Third Biennial Meeting of The International Society for Ecological Economics—Down to Earth: Practical Applications of Ecological Economics held at Hotel Herradura, Costa Rica, during October 24–28, 1994.[/fa]

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Member, Solar Cookers International (SCI), Sacramento, CA. USA; International Solar Energy Society (ISES), Germany and Asociación Costarricense de Energía Solar (ACES), Costa Rica.

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