Design and construction of apotable metallic box solar cooker

Abstract

In Uganda, due to the high price of cooking gases and electricity, people still cook with noncommercial fuels like charcoal and firewood. These cause a lot of health problems and also harm

the environment. A clean solution to this problem is to use a solar cooker. As solar cooker uses

solar energy for its operation and provides an effective solution for the energy crisis, which is a major problem. Besides being safe it is also environmentally sustainable as there is no carbon

emission. Firewood and charcoal have been the main backbone of cooking energy in Uganda.

However, firewood is got from cutting down trees which has led to rapid rate of deforestation

and desertification. This project describes the performance evaluation of a box-type solarcooker wit h reflector fabricated using locally available materials, size of the box is 635 mm × 635 mm. The experimental solar cooker consists of an al uminum absorber pl ate ( 1 mm) paint ed matt black and a doubl e-glazed lid. The bottom and sides are lagged with wool insulator, thickness = 100 mm. The reflector consists of a metallic-framed cover for the box when not in use. Thermal performance experiments were conducted in order to determine the output energy (Eout) of the box type solar cooker by calculating the temperature difference. Finally, the results illustrated that the cooker has a good reliability for cooking food and boiling water.