Solar Cooker: Working, Design & Advantages

With the use of Sun energy reradiated, most of people use a solar cooker to make cooking food easier. The basic principle of solar cooker is to cook foods when sunlight heats its pot. A mirror named concave is mainly employed in this cooker to reflect sunlight into a single focal point.

The concave mirror reflects sun rays into a cooker’s pan. With the help of concave mirrors, UV lights comes into the solar cooker and then converts lights into longer infrared light rays that help to cook foods. To make water, fat, and protein in food onto the cooker, infrared radiations play a crucial role by giving energy.

So, the question is how light energy and receiver material interact between each other? The simple answer is it turns light to heat which is called conduction.

Top attractive designs of Solar Cooker

Trough Solar Cooker

The trough cooker has been the inspiration for the trough design. The trough's longer and narrower shape displaces the circular form, which is reminiscent of a satellite dish.

Curved reflective panels shape a shallow trough to collect maximum solar energy. Solar cookers of this type produce enough heat to double as grills.

Parabolic Solar Cooker

You can cook and fry food easily on a parabolic solar cooker very easily because a standard burner on your electric stove makes it easier for you. This kind of cooker is available on the market but you need to invest some extra to buy it as it very hard to build this.

Along with buying this cooker from the reputable solar cooker manufacturers, you need to buy some additional materials which allow this solar cooker to heat up. Don’t bake the bread on this cooker.

If you want to take complete benefit of the sun, realign the cooker which is possible only in day. There is a drawback of this parabolic solar cooker which is its high reflection from the sunlight that can damage your eye damage so be careful while using it.

Box Style Solar Cooker

As the name suggest, the solar cooker is available in square or rectangular shape which looks beautiful. The cooker is made from different types of materials.

If you need to enhance your cooking space with this cooker, the process needs to be started with a cardboard box and build a larger wooden box. The features of this kind of cooker allow you to cook food simultaneously in a solar cooker.

Turn the cooker quickly when a box lid is used as a vertical reflective surface to follow the sunlight in a day.

You can experience stable cooking with the specious cooking area in the box style solar cookers. The cooker isn’t inclined to blow over in a breeze.

Panel Solar Cooker

You can collapse into small cookers to transport it anywhere which is the biggest benefit of using a panel solar cooker. The build quality of this kind of solar cooker is very affordable and it is very easy to operate by inexperienced people.

The process starts from using flat sheets of cardboard; on the other hand, you can also use numerous small size cardboard pieces which allow cooker pot to increase the larger area.

A reflective surface of the windshield shades is one of the simplest forms of use of this panel solar cooker. These windshield shades can easily available in sunny weathers.

These windshield will only work and reflect with the sun when you would park your car where a sunlight is high.

Don’t worry your car’s interior climate will not to be heated, because the reflective surfaces allows your car to be cool and also prevents your steering wheel from becoming overheat from the sunlight.

How a solar cooker works?

Here are the working principles of a Solar Cooker from one of the best solar cooker suppliers:

Trapping Heat Energy

By sealing off the cooker's interior from the outside air, convection is greatly diminished. A glass lid for the pot increases the cooker's heat retention capacity and reduces the amount of energy lost through convection.

Turning light Energy to Heat Energy

Concentrated sunlight is directed at a receiver, such as a pan, to heat it. Light is converted to heat by a process called conduction, which is aided by the interaction between the light energy and the receiver material.

Utilizing heat-conductive and heat-retentive materials optimizes the conversion. To get the most out of a solar cooker, utilize matte black pots and pans.

Also Read: Best 10 Solar Water Heater Manufacturers Suppliers & Dealers in India

Focusing on Sunlight

Light from the sun is concentrated and directed into a compact kitchen via a mirror surface with high specular reflection. Concentrating sunlight by several orders of magnitude results in temperatures high enough to melt salt and metal.

This level of heat is unnecessary for residential solar cookery. Commercially available solar cooker price are rated to reach temperatures between 65 and 400 degrees Celsius.

Advantages of using Solar Cooker

Free Solar Cooking Experience

Once you have paid for a solar cooker, you don’t need to pay extra cost. Don’t worry about gas, fuel, and other briquettes. Think about how many gas bottles you can save if you’re not using them every day?

You don’t have to pay electricity bill for cooking- the solar cooker runs with electricity you just need to connect into marina mains or make your delicious meals.

Solar cooker has no important parts to be repaired if it broken.  You don’t have to a running cost with a solar cooker.

Quick and easier

The time is gone when family waits for cooking food. A solar cooker is an easy way to cook food easier and faster. You just need to chop some vegetables and meat that you want to mix in your food and throw them into the pot and let them cook in the solar cooker.

There is a rare chance of slow cooking in the solar cooker which is due to bad weather. It is also allow quick cleaning.

In our busy life, we don’t want to cook food on the gas so make it easier by preparing the pot around 10am morning when you’re on a full energy and serve the breakfast to your family and friends quickly.

Healthier food

No need to worry about unhygienic food if you have a good company solar cooker. Cook food on the low heat so vitamins and other nutrients will never go from your food. There is no chance of carcinogens and mutagens in the solar cooked foods.

Delicious taste of food

Don’t mix the 16 dishes in your solar cooker otherwise it can be removed your food taste. Make sure powder you throw while cooking the food in solar cooker. Every other dish has been perfectly seasoned, juicy, and tasty, with that one exception. When cooking at a low temperature for an extended period of time, flavors develop and intensify, resulting in consistent praise from you and your visitors.

An ideal choice for Off-Gridders

A solar cooker would be the best option for those who want to living off grid. Installing the solar power at your home can be ideal way to switch to a solar cooker that will allow you to stress free cooking system. A box type solar cooker is the perfect alternative for your cooking style for who use a wood stove and open flame to cook food.

Environment Friendly

Imagine if you’re not using gas or electric over at your home, how much environment friendly you are? No more depend on the gas stove to cook the delicious food.

But, if you’re still using oven, rill and open fire to cook the food, then you are becoming the major part of enhancing harmful carbons into the climate, so take the advantage of environment friendly solar over right now! Solar cookers are a great investment whether your goal is to live completely off the grid or to make a smaller but still noticeable difference in your environmental footprint.

As we have discovered a solar cooker is the kind of solar thermal collector that reflects solar energy to make a delicious and tasteful foods. No doubt, they are the best for environment, economy, and health. However, the work of the solar cooker is based on the climate.

Before buying a solar cooker, check their prices, brand, performance, capacity, and more. Think about the types of solar cooker such as box style solar cooker, Panel Solar Cooker, Parabolic Solar Cooker and Trough Solar Cooker.

FAQs: Solar Cooker

Q. What is solar cooker?

Ans.With the use of direct sunlight energy, a solar cooker is the special type of thermal controller which is used to prepare pasteurizes beverages and other foods products by heating, and cooking. A solar cookers can be expensive as compared to other gas, electric stoves.

Q. What are the major types of solar cookers?

Ans. The three major types of solar cookers are box style solar cooker, Panel Solar Cooker, Parabolic solar cooker rand Trough Solar Cooker. Every solar cooker has different uses and comes with different pots.

Q. What is solar cooker advantages and disadvantages?

Ans. Advantages:

  • They are environment friendly
  • They are cheap to buy
  • They don’t allow escaping smokes
  • Flexible
  • Disadvantages:
  • Getting much space of your area
  • Fail on the bad weather
  • Crucial to predict how long a meal will take to prepare

Q. Where are solar cookers used?

Ans. They are used in outside area for the special events like camping, trekking and more.

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