Social, environmental and economic assessment of box-type solar cookers for domestic acceptance in India

Abstract

To protect the environment, the United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Glasgow with an agenda to maintain the global average temperature well below 2 °C at the preindustrial level, the substitutability of coal power plants, and inefficient conventional power plants. These goals can also be supported at the domestic level by the replacement of conventional cooking processes with box-type solar cookers. Several clean fuel technologies were adopted by different countries to mitigate the emission as mentioned in the literature but the adoption of solar cooking is lagging. This article examines various aspects of a box-type solar cooker that can increase community adaptability, such as cooking time assessment, social, environmental, and economic factors. In the present study, solar radiation data is collected and cooking time assessment for 4 members of the family is evaluated for the requirement of 1.5 kg rice and 0.5 kg of alloe matter sabzi. The requirement of heat is 1.4 MJ for cooking the food and this energy can be available by 2 pm when food is placed at 11: 00 am inside the cooking pot of box type solar cooker. Further, this article covers several social parameters which influence the adaptability of box-type solar cooker. In environmental analysis, the use of solar cooker indicates a reduction of 16.32 kg of CO2 monthly when used for single meal cooking in a day. The economic parameters discussion helps in the replaceability of materials used in the solar cooker to minimize the cost.