T. J.Sarvoththama Jothi,

Lecturer, School Of Mechanical Engineering, SASTRA Deemed University, Tirumalaisamudram, Thanjavur 613 402. India. Tel: 04362 264101 (office)

Fax: 04362 264120. Email: tisiothi@mech. sastra. edu. tjsjothi@hotmail. com

ABSTRACT

Enormous amount of energy is wasted in the form of heat for the purpose of cooking all around the world. Broad ranges of technologies are required around the world to incorporate the energy required for cooking. We have efficiently designed and developed a device named Line Concentrated Solar Cooker for the purpose of cooking and heating water or even pasteurization of drinking water. It is distinct from other type of cooker that is using the same old technologies. More over this device can be constructed by means of an inexpensive, commonly available material, thus providing a low-cost option suitable for household use in the developing world. This device was mainly designed from the input taken from the houses of four members each at various places. Its design and performance were evaluated at the laboratory including the efficiency tests. A model of such device was developed which gave the maximum efficiency of around 27 %. This Line Concentrated Solar Cooker has been mainly designed to prevent tracking mechanism, which is the main draw back for other concentrated type solar cooker. In order to prevent tracking mechanism, the design has been made in such a manner that the maximum sunrays are impinging on the reflecting surface of the Line Concentrated Solar Cooker all the time. Hence, minimum of at least 35 percent of the area of the Line Concentrated Solar Cooker is exposed to the sunlight at 8:00 AM and maximum of 100 percentage by noon and gradually decreases by evening as the sun sets. This model gave us a good results leading to excellent heating effect from morning to evening. Hence the heating effect gradually increased from morning to maximum at noon.

INTRODUCTION

We all know the fact that half of the world’s population is burning wood and dried dung in order to cook their food. It is learned that it causes more illnesses by breathing smoke through out the day, and there are more environmental impacts like deforestation, pollution, health hazardous etc., many of these billions of people live near the equator, where sunshine is abundant and free. One of the countries where most of the sunshine available abundantly is our own country INDIA, where many types of equipment (devices) related to solar studies can be developed and used with maximum efficiency. There are many devices related to solar that exists like solar parabolic cooker, solar box type cooker, solar water heater and many more. But what we tried to develop is Line Concentrated Line Concentrated Solar Cooker. The Line Concentrated Solar Cooker is safe, easy to make, inexpensive yet effective solar cooker in capturing the sun’s energy for cooking and pasteurizing water. It looks like a large, deep funnel, and incorporates the best features of the parabolic cooker and the box cooker. As the name indicates it looks like a cone-shaped reflecting funnel, sunlight would be concentrated along the axis of the funnel at the bottom, where the cooking pot or jar would be placed. Safety comes from the fact that the sunlight is concentrated along a line deep inside
the funnel. If you place your arm up the bottom of the funnel, warmth can be felt with our burning the hand as in the case of point concentrated solar cooker. This is much safer than concentrating sunlight to a point above a parabolic collector. The heat loss in Line Concentrated Solar Cooker is very less when compared to that of the box type solar cooker in which heat is gained only from one plane and loss occurs through the other planes. In Line Concentrated type solar cooker, the whole area of the funnel is used for capturing the heat radiation.