Experimental thermal performance studies on solar hot box cooker with different absorber coating materials

Abstract

Hot box-type solar cookers can be a promising option for meeting the challenges of clean cooking fuel for communities in developing countries. One of the major components of hot box solar cookers is the absorber tray, which is responsible for converting solar radiation into useful thermal energy for a heating load. For improving the efficiency of the hot box solar cooker it is important to enhance the absorption. The present work focuses on enhancing the thermal performance of solar cookers using different absorber coating materials on the absorber tray. Comparative studies on box-type solar cookers have been done for black matt paint and mixed material paints. Five types of mixed material paints were prepared by mixing CuO, TiO2, activated carbon, Tungsten, and mica with black paint. These prepared mixed material paints were examined in reference to the black matt paint on the identical sections of box type solar cooker. The experiments were conducted with different coating materials with water load and without load conditions. During the experiments, the surface temperature difference without load was found to be in the range of1°C to 14 °C for different materials. With water load conditions, the hot water temperature difference was observed to be about 1 °C to 7 °C for different coatings.