State of the art of solar cooking: An overview
Introduction
Cooking is prime necessity for all people across the world. Owing to fuel scarcity or highly expensive fuel cooking energy switch by renewable is a burning issue and is discussed widely in the literature. In developing countries, cooking energy requirement is meeting through fuelwood which resulted in deforestation, fuel-wood shortage, increased costs of fuels and adverse environmental effects. Many researchers work out the environmental effects of fossil fuels, sustainable energy consumption, energy efficiency, conservation, and renewable energy sources in rural areas of developing countries [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9] and concluded that renewable energy resources are important with respect to environmental effects [10].
Many households that depend on fuel-wood have shifted to modern energy carriers like liquefied petroleum gas [11]. In India particularly about, 70% population still residing in rural areas, there is tremendous demand on resources such as fuel wood, agricultural residues and dung cake to meet the fuel requirements for cooking, water heating and space heating (during winter). Dependence on bio-resource to meet the daily requirement of fuel, fodder in rural areas is more than 85% in many rural districts in India [12]. Presently most of states of India are facing serious problems in availability of essential energy sources, i.e., bio-resource at rural area on account of acute drought.
The suitability of solar energy for decentralized applications makes it an attractive option to supplement or substitute the energy supply from other sources. Solar cooking is the most direct and promising application of solar energy. Solar energy is a promising option capable of being one of the leading energy sources for cooking [13], [14].
The sun has become a potentially viable substitute for fuelwood in food preparation in much of the developing world [15]. Solar cooking systems essentially work on a simple rule of converting the light energy into heat energy. Solar cooking can be done by solar cooker and it is the simplest, safest, most convenient way to cook food without consuming fuels or heating up the kitchen. It is practical due to their inherent simplicity and consequent lower cost. Also the food is physically protected from contamination [16]. The use of solar cookers results in appreciable fuel and time savings as well as increased energy security for rural households using commercial fuels [17].
This is the best options to meet cooking energy requirement during holy pilgrimage of HAJJ where several million Muslims from all over the world meet annually in the tent-covered valleys of Arafat and Mina, where they spend about 4 days [17]. This concept inspire for community cooking where considerable amount of fuel can be easily saved. In account of this world largest solar cooker was established at Prajapita Brahma Kumaris Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya at Mount Abu, Rajasthan (Fig. 1). This installed solar cooker is in position to cook 38,500 meals per day [18].
The adaptation of solar cooker in an urban area depends on various factors specific to a city. But introduction of solar cooking in refugee camps have no difficulties in adapting to the solar cooker [19]. Solar Cooking International claims solar cooking has been or is being introduced in 107 countries [20].
In this paper, comprehensive review on different type of solar cooker has been made. Deign consideration, theoretical and experimental performance, it's energetic and exergetic analysis and economics performance also discussed.
Section snippets
Brief history of solar cooker
Before the age of civilization, cooking of food was unknown. People ate food in the condition in which they found it. Solar was first time to heat wafers by Essenes, an early sect of Jews, to create a food source that is extremely healthy for the human body. The first known person to build a box to solar cook food was Horace de Saussure, a Swiss naturalist and published his work in 1767. He cooked fruits in a primitive solar box cooker that reached temperatures of 88 °C. He was the grandfather
Classification of solar cooker
There are different type of solar cookers have been developed all over the world. However we can broadly categories solar cooker in three different ways as shown in Fig. 2. Further Schwarzer and da Silva [23] classified the solar cookers in four different ways on the basis of type of collector and the place of the cooking. These are (a) flat plate collector with direct use; (b) flat plate collector with indirect use; (c) parabolic reflector with direct use and (d) Parabolic reflector with
Design and testing approach
In order to compare the characteristic of different types of solar cookers, power and efficiency to be calculated. The average heating power of a solar cooker can be calculated as follows:To avoid the uncertainty of boiling point, heating power is measured from ambient temperature up to 95 °C.
The evaporation power, is estimated during evaporation of water t boiling point and it express mathematicallyEfficiency is the ratio of power output to incoming power and
Energy efficiency
Energy analysis based on the First Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., net heat supplied converted in to work. Energy analysis thus ignores reductions of energy potential. Its analysis can provide sound management guidance in those applications in which usage effectiveness depends solely on energy quantities. Thus, energy analysis is suitable for the sizing and analyzing of the systems using only one form of energy [27]. The energy input to the animal feed solar cooker is energy of solar radiation per
Performance analysis
There are number of researcher, scientists and academician involved to promote solar cookers for practical applications and recently significant interest has been seen in the field of design, development and testing of various types of solar cookers like box type [42], [49], [50], [51], [52], [53], [54], concentrator type [55], [56], [57], [58] and oven type [59], [60], [61], [62].
From performance point of view every element of a solar cooker has significant importance and direct effects on its
Box type solar cooker
The new design of box type solar cooker with a single reflector at the hood to solve the problem of preheating, as faced in the conventional box-type solar cooker was introduced by Tiwari and Yadav [64] as shown in Fig. 4. In this design, the base of the oven acts as the lid, unlike the conventional box type solar cooker and it helps in cooking twice a day. Grupp et al. [65] introduced an advance version of the box type solar cooker. The main advantages over conventional box type cooker is that
Parabolic solar cooker
Concentrating type solar cookers are expected to demonstrate high performance because of the large collection area employed. However, the net amount of heat used is still low. This is greatly attributed to the large amount of heat losses from the bare food pots used. Introducing the oven type concept as an alternative approach for collecting the concentrated solar energy would drastically boost the overall cooker efficiency. In this work, the transient heat balance equations were developed for
Exergetic analysis
In the beginning exergetic evaluation of low cost parabolic type and box type solar cooker was conducted by Ozturk [39]. Later Petela [85] inspired from Ozturk [39] study and he conducted an experiment on cylindrical trough shape solar cooker to analyzed exergetic performance in actual use. Exergy analysis is a useful tool for evaluating the thermal performance of the cooker. The design parameter optimization of a solar cooker can be made by the exergy analysis. Comparative study on energy and
Economic evaluation
Kandpal and Mathur [88] assess the economics of box type solar cookers in the Indian context and it was found that, the price of conventional fuels used for cooking play a decisive role in the use of solar cookers. In rural area particularly people use locally available resources at free of cost (wood, cow dung, agricultural waste, etc.), this is the main cause of poor adaptability in rural areas. They emphasize that solar should be developed at minimum cost with the help of locally available
Conclusion
Rigorous literature survey on solar cooker, their applications, types, testing approach, energy and exergy analysis, thermal performance and economic of cooker was made. The review gives an overview that the solar cooking is the most direct and convenient application of solar energy. Solar energy is a promising option capable of being one of the leading energy sources for cooking. It is cheap compared with other forms of cooking, and is beneficial for areas with abundant sunshine. Various types
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