Title: Performance analysis of concentrating solar cookers with a different geometry: comparative study

Authors: Rajendra Patil; Yogesh Kulkarni

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, SNJB's Late Sau KBJ College of Engineering, Chandwad, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, SNJB's Late Sau KBJ College of Engineering, Chandwad, India

Abstract: In recent years, active exploitation of solar energy for cooking food, and for numerous domestic and commercial applications, is needed. Although solar cookers are improving every day, tests were performed individually for every cooker under different conditions. Thus, we are unable to compare the performance effectively. In this work, two concentrating solar cookers of the same aperture area with different geometry were compared experimentally based on standard test protocols and first law under the same environmental conditions. The investigation illustrates that the performance of the Prince-15 cooker is better than the SK-14 due to its excellent geometry and thermal parameters. The temperature distribution of cookers modelled with Ansys-19 software showed a close approximation with the experimental observations. The pace of cookers is also examined by cooking a few food items. This comparative analysis is assumed to help the end-users to choose a proper and better cooking technology.

Keywords: solar energy; solar cooker; test standard; cooking power; first law; energy efficiency; optical efficiency factor; heat loss factor; figure of merit; Ansys.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRET.2022.123976

International Journal of Renewable Energy Technology, 2022 Vol.13 No.3, pp.265 - 284

Received: 01 Nov 2021
Accepted: 10 Mar 2022
Published online: 05 Jul 2022 *

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