Cooking with a solar cooker
Posted by Solar energy guru | Filed under Solar powered products
Solar cookers have become the need of the hour today with the increasing fuel prices. Solar cookers can serve the needs of the developing nations of today in terms of reduction of the noise and smoke created by the gas used in the indoor kitchens making use of resources like coal, wood, and natural gas.
With the technology-intensive character of cooking requiring extensive use of gas or electricity, solar energy serves as an inexhaustible source of energy. A pioneering and environmentally convivial cooking method with solar cookers limited resources of the environment like wood, kerosene, natural gas and coal can be saved. Burning of the restricted energy resources like wood and kerosene exhausts these non-renewable and scarce sources of energy.
Solar cookers have the advantage that they cause less of pollution as created by the thermal sources of energy like the coal, gasoline and the LPG.
Methodology behind the working of solar cookers
Solar cookers are available in different kinds of sizes and shapes, but all of them work on the same kind of principle of the greenhouse gas trapping. Solar cookers do not make use of any kind of a fuel but only work on the energy of the sun. Solar cookers work on the greenhouse effect, which means that they let the sunlight in, but do not let it pass through. The light and warmth of the sun is trapped in the solar cooker, which is used for cooking up the food.
The most effortless kind of a solar cooker is the box, which includes an aluminum foil covered by a simple sheet of glass. Used in most of the solar cooking countries, which are almost 126 in number, the box solar cooker makes use of a utensil containing the food put inside the box. The temperatures can be easily adjusted in a solar cooker up to almost 225 to 275 degrees of Fahrenheit. When the box is sealed, it traps the heat inside the cooker.
The sunlight is actually absorbed by the dark material of the pan reflected by the foil, which also heats up the air inside the box.
Advantages of using solar cookers
Solar cookers make use of an unlimited energy source i.e. the sun that is only unavailable on the rainy days or in the night. It is very simple to make solar cookers and the best part about them is that they are portable. They do not require any kind of an electrical wiring or the LPG gas lines. Solar cookers can be assembled quite easily from the common materials of an aluminum foil and the glass box.
No doubt, solar cookers are a perfect option for the outdoor activities like trekking and camping. The additional advantage is that they are perfectly attuned to the environment leaving no burnt up desecrate or waste products. A single solar cooker can be used again and again without any consumption of fuel. Solar cookers can be easily used by the lower income strata of the society as an affordable and efficient energy consumption source.
Parabolics are also a very commonly used kind of a solar cooker in China, which is largely used for institutional cooking purposes. They are rounded concentrator cookers, which can cook at very high temperatures almost 800 degrees of Fahrenheit. The advantage that the box cookers have over the parabolic cookers is that they do not require any kind of a temperature adjustment unlike the latter ones, which usually need a supervision and temperature modification for safe operability.
Solar cookers can be easily assembled at homes with the help of online instructional guides. They only require few materials like a metal sheet, cardboard, wood and glass and one can easily make a solar oven, which can be also used for baking pizzas.
