Solar Cooking

Solar Cooking | Low Temperature Solar Thermal in Australia | Further Information | References

Low temperature solar thermal technologies, especially those that do not generate electricity, rely on the scientific principles behind the Greenhouse Effect to generate heat. Electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, including visible and infrared wavelengths, penetrates into the collector that is absorbed by the surfaces inside the collector. Once the radiation is absorbed by the surfaces within the collector, the temperature rises. This increase in temperature can be used to cook food.

Solar Cooking

A solar cooker is a device that uses the energy in sunlight to generate sufficient temperatures to be able to cook food. Solar cookers can be used to perform most cooking tasks, such as baking cakes, roasting meat and vegetables, boiling soups, etc. The principle of using the sun to cook food is not a new concept. Swiss naturalist Horace de Saussure was known to have been experimenting with solar cookers as early as 1767. Three basic solar cooker designs exist:

Parabolic Reflector
Box Cookers
Panel Cookers

Parabolic Reflectors

Two types of parabolic reflectors are available: trough and dish. Parabolic cookers focus the light from the sun at or along a focal axis, as shown in Figure 1a and 1b. Dish cookers focus the sun onto one point and cook in a similar way to single hotplates whilst trough designs are similar to rotisseries and are best used for cooking long thin foods such as sausages.

Figure 1a) Parabolic trough cooker 1b) Parabolic dish cooker
(Images courtesy of Newton's Apple and Rainbow Power Company)

Box Cookers

As higher temperatures are often required for the cooking of food than would normally be obtained with flat plate collectors used in water heating, box cookers usually have reflectors to increase the amount of radiation that enters the collector, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 A simple solar box cooker
(Image courtesy of The Solar Cooking Archive).

Panel Cookers

A relatively new style of solar cooker, a panel cooker consists of a number of flat reflection panels that direct light onto a container to be cooked (see Figure 3). To retain the heat, the cooking dish is placed within a plastic bag or under a glass bowl.

Figure 3 A simple panel cooker
(Image courtesy of Solar Cooking Archive).

Low Temperature Solar Thermal Technologies in Australia

For some of the research in solar thermal technologies in Australia click here

Further Information

RISE Resources - Information regarding available renewable energy resources.

RISE Technologies - An extensive collection of information regarding renewable energy technologies.

RISE Applications & System Design - Renewable energy application information and system designs.

RISE System Displays - Case studies and information on installed renewable energy systems & performance data.

The Energy Resources Institute – Solar Thermal

The Solarserver – Solar Thermal Technologies in the United States

Australian National University – Solar Thermal Energy Research

Wikipedia – Solar Energy

Renewable Energy Commercialisation in Australia – Solar Thermal

References

None.