A Scientific Pore over a Solar Cooking Systems

Abstract

Energy is essential to life and all living organisms. It is fulfilling our daily needs: cooking, lighting, water heating and purifying, etc. It is also very significant to the human to maintain good health which is largely ignored. Three billion around people are using wood, cow dung, coal and other conventional fuels inside their homes resulting in indoor pollution. To conquer the said problem, solar energy cooking is the only solution. A large amount of solar energy is available in various parts of the world, which is pollution-free and easy to harness. More than 36% of the total generated energy is consumed for cooking in India. Hence there is a need to develop alternative cooking mode which will be easy, pollution-free and economical. However, the utilization of this form of energy at a large scale is only possible by developing an efficient cooking system with solar thermal energy storage technology and conventional cooking option which will enable the odd hours cooking. In this review paper, an attempt has been made to study the history and recent advancement in the field of solar energy cooking. The paper provides a detailed review of such kind of technology with cooking principle, types of cookers and their performance. Moreover, the review has been done on the use of Phase Change Material (PCM) in a solar cooking system which enables the night cooking.