COMPARISON OF EXPERIMENTAL DATA FOR SENSIBLE AND LATENT HEAT STORAGE MATERIALS FOR LATE-EVENING COOKING BASED ON A DISH-TYPE SOLAR COOKER

摘要

This paper presents an investigation of the thermal performance of sensible and latent heat storage materials in a solar cooker based on a parabolic dish collector for late-evening cooking. In an experimental setup, a pressure cooker is placed at the center of two concentric pots containing two different heat storage materials in the space between them. Sixteen combinations are formed from sand, iron grits, stone pebbles, iron balls, and acetamide for thermal energy storage. During sunshine hours, this unit (solar cooker) is placed on the plate of a parabolic dish collector for storing the thermal energy in the storage materials. Initially the material in the outer pot stores energy and meanwhile transfers it to the material in the inner pot, which further stores and transfers heat to the pressure cooker. In the evening, the solar cooker is kept in an insulator box loaded with cooking food. It has been found for different cases that the evening cooking was successful even when the solar cooker was charged for three hours, i.e., from 13:00 h to 16:00 h. The inner material assists in cooking while the outer material acts as an insulator and also compensates for the heat loss from the inner material.