Performance Analysis of Solar Box Cooker

The project is about the utilization of solar energy for domestic purpose. Conventional cooking process is more expensive process. It requires more consumption of conventional fuels. But utilizing solar energy, we can minimize the fuel usage and also minimize our expense. In this project, we make use of mirrors to obtain the heat energy from the sunlight. By constructing a box cooker, having mirrors pieces pasted over its extended surface area, we can achieve the heat energy. When the sun radiation falls on the box, the mirror reflectors reflect the rays to the focal point of the box. By placing the cooking vessel in the focal point, we can cook the food. Also, we are going to analyse the different surface thermal performances with coated and non-coated. By this we can obtain the maximum temperature for cooking in different materials. This project can be implemented in rural and hilly regions where the cooking energy resources are not properly available. Keywords—Solar cooker, Performance analysis of cooker, reflecting mirror, bx type


INTRODUCTION
Cooking is the most important energy consuming operation in the domestic sector, as energy for cooking accounts for 50% of the total primary energy consumption. As solar energy is renewable and not associated with any environmental and health problems, it could be used as a source of thermal energy for cooking. The inner walls and bottom of cooker box to be used for making solar cooker are painted black to increase absorption of heat. It is more suitable for sun shine areas and its low price makes it very attractive commercially, especially among the rural population in the developing countries. The walls of the box are made thick so as to minimize loss of heat due to radiation and is painted all black from inside. Solar cookers with having an additional energy of phase change material will help to trap more amount of solar energy for a long period of time during the evening conditions. The solar box cooker have aluminum cooking vessel which will increase the rate of heat addition and thus cooking is made fast also the vessels which having glass covering absorber plate will provide the closed volume of air which makes the surrounding of the vessel becomes more heat and performance rate of the box cooker is improved.
2. THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE TES (Thermal Energy Storage) could be a important technology in systems involving renewable energies further as different energy resources because it will build their operation additional economical, significantly by bridging the amount between periods once energy is harvested and periods once it's required. These demands is matched with the assistance of thermal energy storage systems that operate synergistically, and deals with the storage of energy by cooling, heating, melting, curing or vaporizing a fabric and also the thermal energy becomes obtainable once the method is reversed.

Outer Box
The outer box of a box type solar cooker is designed with specific dimensions 2 X 1 X 1 (in feet units). It is designed with the help of Catia software and fabricated by plywood and the reflector doors are joined by using rectangular hinges.

.2 Glass lid
The main function of the plane glass is to provide the air tightened closed space for cooking and acts as an inner box. It is place at the top of the outer box and supported by using wooden beadings on the sides of the outer box.
3.3 Mirror Reflector Reflector acts as a source of providing heat to the box cooker by reflecting the sunlight which falls on their mirrored surface inclined at some angle. The inclination of the reflector plays an important role in this cooker because the sun radiation reaching the earth's surface at an angle needs to be diverted into the solar box cooking vessel. This reflector is placed at inclination angle by means of stainless-steel hooks which is screwed in the surface of outer box.

Phase Change Material
Phase change material changes it state from one form to another by maintain the process of heat addition and rejection to the substance. Paraffin wax is a kind of material which changes into solid when heat is liberated from the substance and changes into liquid when heat is added to them and this happens until phase change capacity of material remains in it.

Cooking vessel
The cooking pot with glass lid is more suitable for solar cooking because the air tightened lid will help to increase the cooking rate. It is mainly manufactured by stainless steel, because it is safe and durable and glass lid retains more heat. It permits cooking process to be observed through glass without lifting lid.

Temperature sensors
Temperature sensors are going to used in this project to measure the temperature of solar cooker. Thermocouple is used and it's principle is seebeck effect which says that two

.CONSTRUCTION AND ASSEMBLY OF THE
COMPONENTS This is to describe the detailed construction procedure of the solar box cooker. It consists of three section; the wooden box frame, the mirror reflector and the Aluminium foil with PCM. The construction of the solar box cooker, based on the initial design sketches, materials were brought, in which the detail explanation are given below: Aluminum foil of (2 pieces) 30cm × 60cm and (2 pieces) 30cm × 30cm with 2mm thickness were fixed. The wooden box frames were to be made with the plywood materials (2 pieces) 60cm × 30cm × 30cm and (2 pieces) 30cm × 30cm × 30cm. The stone pebbles, phase change materials and cooking vessel were kept inside the wooden box. The plywood pieces can be connected with nail, hinges and hook. The mirror reflector with dimensions of 28cm × 58cm was used as the emitting radiation where the mirror piece is glued. An Aluminium foil absorber helps to cooking vessel was placed in the box when cooking.

TEMPERATURE OF BLACK COATED PRESSURE COOKER
The following table 5.1 shows the temperature readings of the black coated pressure cooker. The temperature is measured by keeping the water inside the black coated cooker. The measured temperature is plotted versus time.  Table 5.2 shows the temperature readings of the phase change material (paraffin wax) with stone pebbles. The temperature is measured by keeping the water inside the PCM (Paraffin wax) with stone pebbles.  The size of the solar box reflecting mirror, we adopted is about 58cm length, 28cm breadth and 2cm height. For this we obtain the maximum temperature of 94.1°C. 6.1 CONCLUSION Solar technology has made huge technological and cost improvements, but more research and development remain to be done to make it cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Costs can be reduced by increasing demand for this technology worldwide, as well as through component design and advanced systems.. Advancements in the technology and the use of low-cost thermal storage will allow future solar power plants to operate for more hours during the day and shift solar power generation to evening hours.