Energy Stored Sensible Hybrid Solar Cooker for Day and Night Cooking

The continuously increasing imbalance between the energy demand and supply together with increasing cost of the conventional energy resources as well as the growing environmental pollution are forcing the people to invent new methods either to reduce energy demands or to find alternate energy resources for the cooking purposes. A hybrid solar cooker with oil as heat storage medium is designed and fabricated. Engine oil with high thermal conductivity is chosen as the sensible heat storage medium for the fabricated solar cooker. The system has two cook tops and two cook tops are used during day time and the parabolic dish collector is used for heating the oil in the receiver tank placed at the focus point of the dish. The primary cook top is placed under the oil receiver tank and the food is cooked by the concentrated solar energy falling on it. The oil circulation is done automatically using a 12 V reciprocating pump. The circulation starts when the oil at the receiver reaches to 700C. The pump can be worked in manual and automatic mode. The heat which left after cooking is transferred to the oil in the storage tank through the copper pipe. Here the copper pipe acts as a heat exchanger. The stored thermal energy in the oil is used for evening cooking purposes. A DC heater plug which is charged by a DC battery is used to heat the coil during night times and also when there is less solar radiation. Thus the cooker can cook food during day and night without any interruption. The energy stored sensible hybrid solar cooker is cost effective and is portable to use.