Comparative analysis of the performance evaluation of solar box cooker and conventional method

Abstract

There is urgent need of switching over to a perennial sourceof energy reserve as a powerful alternative so as to replace all the fastest depleting fossil fuels.The solar box cooker depends on the sun energy whereas gas burner and coal pot depend on gas and charcoal as fuel. The purpose of the study is to design, construct and evaluate the performance of solar box cooker using locally available materials. Moreover, this study aimed to compare the constructed solar box cooker with charcoal and gas in terms of cooking time and energy cost. The constructed solar cooker relatively showed better performance in cooking different food for a large family. The dimension for the sides of the box used was 600mm x 500mm x 590mm representing the top two corners and height of the box. Also, the end part of the box before the base has outer and inner dimensions namely: 500mm and 470mm respectively while the dimension of the absorber plate which was divided into three parts namely; Top, middle, and base because the box is not having equal dimensions. The Top dimension was 500mm x 440mm.The middle has 445mm x 410mm and the base has 410mm x 410mm. Efficiency was noted to have increased with decreasing temperature differences between absorber plate and ambient (air) temperature (TC-Ta). Increase in temperature does not necessarily lead to increase in efficiency. Efficiency decreased with decreasing sunlight. The Solar Box Cooker (SBC) after being constructed and tested has 98.6% efficiency and its energy required to cook food was realized too be 410.849KJ. The energy required for charcoal and gas to cook food ranges from 1.664KJ,1.536KJ,1.6KJ and 906.048KJ,878.592KJ, 878.592KJ respectively were recorded under the various weather conditions. This implies that gas burns faster than charcoal. It is therefore recommended that Solar Box Cooker should be used to combined with modified charcoal stove to cook food.