The oven receiver: An approach toward the revival of concentrating solar cookers

Abstract

Concentrating type solar cookers are expected to demonstrate high performance because of the large collection area employed. However, the net amount of heat used is still low. This is greatly attributed to the large amount of heat losses from the bare food pots used. Introducing the oven type concept as an alternative approach for collecting the concentrated solar energy would drastically boost the overall cooker efficiency. In this work, the transient heat balance equations were developed for predicting the thermal behavior of an oven type concentrating solar cooker. This simulation was used to show theoretically the great advantage of using a glass-sided oven over the conventional bare receiver pot. The resulting mathematical model was solved using numerical integration. The transient nature of solar radiation and effects of wind speed variation were all taken into consideration. The analysis showed that the oven type receiving pot has both a higher fluid temperature and overall receiver efficiency compared to the bare receiver type, working under similar conditions.