SOLAR COOKERS: AN INTRODUCTION | Prepared For That

By RamboMoe on May 16th, 2012

Solar cookers are ovens that harness the sun?s rays and use them to create a source of heat. They can be used to heat food or drink, cook food, or sterilize drinking water.

Solar cookers are popular in the developing world these days- they can be very inexpensive, some coming as cheap as $5. They don?t require any fuel or electricity, which cuts down on operating costs as well. Since fire wood isn?t used, they help cut down on deforestation (and the often-following desertification). They?re also safer, as wood stoves can be a fire hazard.

But solar cookers can be useful to those living in the western world as well. They offer an alternative to cooking with conventional stoves, if say, you lose power. They can also be helpful if you spend lots of time outdoors. And it can be a fun thing to create for the Do-It-Yourself-ers.

HOW THEY WORK

Solar cookers will use a combination of 4 methods to create a cooking environment.

1)?Concentrating sunlight: like a magnifying glass, some solar cookers will collect solar energy, and direct it onto a small point to maximize the heat created.
2)?Converting light to heat: most solar cookers have a dark cooking surface that absorbs sunlight and releases it as heat.
3)?Trapping heat: a good solar cooker must ensure air and heat stay within the cooking area, to keep the temperatures high.
4)?The Greenhouse Effect: many solar cookers incorporate this effect to their advantage, letting sunlight enter but keeping thermal energy trapped.

TYPES OF SOLAR COOKERS

1)?Box Cooker
A box cooker is basically an insulated box with a transparent glass or plastic top for letting sunlight in. Additional reflectors focus the energy on a concentrated cooking area. This area is dark to maximize the heat released, and the box itself will act like a greenhouse (the more astute of you will have noticed by now that the box cooker incorporates all four of our above checklist).

A decent box cooker can reach 150+ C in good conditions, not as hot as a traditional stove, but still enough to cook most food (albeit much more slowly). And the good thing about solar cookers is that you can leave food in them all day, and it won?t burn.

It?s best to start solar cooking by noon though, to maximize the direct sunlight you receive. The latitude you live in, as well as the weather and the season of year, will affect how quickly your solar cooker can cook food.

2)?Panel Cookers
Panel cookers use reflective panels to direct sunlight into their center, the cooking area (often containing a pot inside of a plastic bag). They tend to be the cheapest, with cardboard-and-foil models costing as little as $5. They produce a low to moderate temperature, not as high as box cookers, but enough to pasteurize milk or water and cook grains like rice. In ideal conditions in good climates, it can get hot enough to cook meat, and on a sunny day can feed a family of 4.

Some models come with a glass case, adding the greenhouse effect to the cooking process and raising the temperatures it is capable of reaching.

3)?Parabola cookers
Parabola (although technically called paraboloid in 3D form, but we?re not going to split hairs here) cookers use a parabola-shaped reflective lens to cook. The benefit of this shape is that it naturally takes various streams of sunlight, and directs then onto one point. Parabola cookers are very effective, cooking as well as regular ovens, but are hard to produce and as such are much more expensive. They also require a certain level of expertise to use. They are very common in China, and are effective for large scale cooking.

4)?Scheffler cookers
Scheffler cookers, named after the scientist who created them, are parabolic cookers that have the added advantage of mechanically adjusting as the sun moves through the sky. They are the most effective solar cooker, but as you might imagine, also the most expensive.

5) Solar kettles

A solar kettle is a simpler form of cooker, whose aim is to get the water in a kettle past to a temperature past the boiling point of water.

Good luck and stay prepared!

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