Community Concentrating Cooker

We've all seen a box-shaped family home solar cooker. Millions of people in our country use this solar cooker for daily cooking.

Community Concentrating Cooker
Photo by Lenstravelier / Unsplash

We've all seen a box-shaped family home solar cooker.  Millions of people in our country use this solar cooker for daily cooking.  The family solar cooker is used to make four to five man cooking.  Which is a very useful tool.  A mass concentrated solar system with an automatic sliding accumulator cooks 100 to 1000 people at a time.  This mass-concentrated solar cooker can be cooked fairly quickly and even in a closed kitchen.  This mass solar cooker can be used effectively in places like monasteries and communal kitchens, where it is very expensive to use gas and other modern fuels.  Mass-centered solar cookers are an excellent tool for more people to save time and fuel.  It is a very useful tool in hostels, ashrams or educational institutions for ceremonies organized for mass festivals and occasions and for lunch.  This tool can be used by farmers, housewives, hoteliers without worrying about fuel.

Most of the time firewood is used for fuel in places where communal kitchens are running, the efficiency of this wood-fired stove is very low at 10 to 15%.  Fuel is used more due to low efficiency.  Trees are cut down because they need more wood.  In addition, the stove does not burn wood completely, so there is a lot of smoke.  The result is air pollution.  Furnace oil and diesel are also sometimes used in communal kitchens.  But there is a question mark over when the supply of these fuels will be lost, so there is a shortage.  In this situation the free daily solar powered mass solar cooker provides an ideal option.

What are the mass concentrated solar cooker ?

A mass-centered solar cooker is a solar-powered plant that operates primarily on the principle of centralization of solar energy.  It has a disk type accumulator with a primary reflecting area of ​​about 7 to 16 sq.m.  Is.  The sun's rays falling on this solar cooker, which is placed outside in the sun, pass through the aperture placed on the north side of the kitchen placed near it and fall on the secondary reflector.  These sun rays falling on the secondary reflector are reflected and fall on the fixed utensils in the kitchen and the cooking is done.

The temperature near the cooking utensils is about 500 to 650 C.  As long as.  The primary reflector has a simple clock-like mechanism so that as the sun moves from east to west in the sky, the accumulator of this cooker also rotates automatically according to the sun.  In the form of fruit, from 9:00 in the morning to 4:00 in the evening, as long as there is sun in the sky, the reflected rays of the sun fall on the cooking utensils placed in the kitchen all day long.

way to use a mass concentrated solar cooke

The disk type solar accumulator is arranged in such a way that it faces south in the Terrace or  plain.  The kitchen wall has an aperture on the north side, where the cooking utensils are placed.  If the solar accumulator is arranged in the terrace, the cooking utensils in the kitchen on that floor are placed on the north side.

Mass concentrated solar cookers are very easy to use.  It is also very easy to maintain.  The solar cooker has a clock-like mechanism with an automatic sliding accumulator according to the direction of the sun.  When it is in front of the sun in the morning, its reflective accumulator spontaneously resumes its work.  Like a clock, it does its work all day long as long as there is sun in the sky so that the sun's reflected rays fall directly on the cooking utensil.

The angle of the sun's rays changes during sunset.  There is also a facility to adjust the reflector accumulator according to the position of the sun in the sky according to the season.  Due to this feature the curvature of the primary reflective mirror can be changed according to the season.

Materials for making mass concentrated solar cookers

This solar cooker was first made by Mr. Wolfgang Schaffler of Australia.  The main structure of a solar cooker is made up of angular sections of soft steel and pipes.  A special type of mirror or aluminum is used to create the reflective surface.  This mirror or aluminum frame is covered with reflective polyester film.  The surface of polished aluminum is used as an auxiliary reflector at the bottom of the cooking / heating utensil.  The bottom of the vessel is painted black.  So that more heat can accumulate.  Every ingredient used in making this cooker is available locally.  The primary reflecting area is about 7 to 16 sq.m.  The cost of a mass concentrated solar cooker is around Rs. 1,50,000 to Rs. 3,00,000.

Specific uses of mass concentrated solar cookers

n addition to cooking, this mass solar cooker can also serve as an efficient water heater.  When the cooker is not to be used for cooking, water can be heated in it, so the reflective rays of the accumulator should fall on the copper water tank.  To do this, change the direction of the water tank so that the reflected rays do not have to be cooked or when the cooking is done.  This plant can be used to get the required hot water in industries.


Photo by Nuno Marques / Unsplash

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