Solar Cooker Carbon Mitigation Potential and Load Capacity: Identification, Analysis, and Utility of the Objective Parameters Derivable from Cooker Opto-Thermal Ratio (COR)

Abstract

Thermal performance parameters (TPPs) are used to rate the thermal performance of a solar cooker by researchers/developers and the objective parameters (OPs) to assist in the evaluation of the utility a solar cooker by users. Few researchers have utilised the correlation between TPP and OPs to facilitate the end users' decision-making with regard to the utility of a cooker for the intended purpose of successfully and satisfactorily completing cooking. In this review paper, some of the performance parameters and the related test procedures have been reviewed. Further an attempt has been made to identify and propose some new and useful objective parameters such as solar cooker load capacity (mmax) and solar cooker carbon mitigation potential (mco2), which will help the user in deciding about the load capacity (specific mass) limit and quantifying its contribution as a clean cooking device (one of the goals of UN, SDG2015), respectively.