Design and Development of Solar Thermal Injera Baking: Steam Based Direct Baking

Abstract

Ethiopia, the second most populated country in Africa, meets 96% of its energy need from bio-mass and majority of this energy goes entirely to Injera baking. Injera, a pan-cake like bread that is consumed by most of the population, demands a temperature of 180-220 oC to be well baked. Both traditional and newly developed biomass Injera stoves are energy inefficient; besides the kitchen environment is highly polluted with soot and smoke that affect the health of household inhabitants. This article introduces new technology that enables Injera baking using indirect solar stove. A parabolic dish with an aperture area of 2.54 m2, a well-insulated stainless steel pipe of 10mm, a coiled stainless steel heat exchanger, a pressure relief valve and three gate valves were equipped in the system and K-type thermocouples were used to record the temperature. The heat transfer process has been governed by the principle of natural circulation boiling-condensation between receiver and stove. A preset pressure relief valve is used to control the self-circulating working heat transfer fluid (steam at a temperature of 250 oC). The system was developed and tested for steam based direct baking in the same fashion as the traditional Injera stove. In this experiment, heat transport without significant loss from the receiver for baking at some distance is demonstrated. The challenge with manual tracking and direct steam based baking model indicates the performance of the technology can be improved. It can also win more acceptances if it is equipped with auto trackers and heat storage mechanism. In conclusion, unlike previous efforts, the experiment demonstrated that a high temperature indirect baking of Injera is possible.