Experimental investigation of solar cooking system based on evacuated tube solar collector for the preparation of concentrated sugarcane juice used in jaggery making

Abstract

An experimental investigation of a solar cooking system has been performed for the preparation of concentrated sugarcane juice required in jaggery making. An evacuated tube solar collector has been used as a heat collecting medium. Experiments have been performed on sunny and clear sky days by taking the cooking loads of 1, 1.5 and 2 L of sugarcane juice. To predict the thermal performance of solar cooking system, an exergy-based approach is employed. The obtained results have been compared with the other solar cooking systems considering performance factors like peak exergy power and product of the peak exergy power value with the temperature difference gap. The maximum value of peak exergy power and the product of temperature difference gap with peak exergy output value is observed maximum for the 2 L of cooking load. A percentage increase of 76% and 59% in the value of peak exergy for the presented system is observed with reference to the peak exergy power for the box-type and parabolic trough-type solar cooker design, respectively. Furthermore, 53.3% rise in the time taken is observed for the cooking load of 2 L with respect to 1 L of cooking load. The results from the present study emphasized that evacuated tube-based solar cooking system has the potential to maintain the temperature of sugarcane juice above its boiling point temperature even in low solar intensity hours.