An Experimental Investigation of Thermal Performance of an Octagonal Box Type Solar Cooker

Abstract

The octagonal box type solar cooker works on the principle of concentrating the solar radiation and converting it into heat. The solar radiations concentrate on the targeted area so that the cooking temperature increases at very fast rate. Modified cooker contain eight reflective inclined sides. The copper plate at the bottom maintains a constant temperature inside the cooker. After rigorous experimentation, modified cooker gives first figure of merit as 0.3027 and second figure of merit as 0.607. Cooking power is 19.767 W. Standard cooking power is 49.639 W. The efficiency of the proposed octagonal solar cooker is 38.36%. As compared to box type solar cooker available in market, modified octagonal cooker has 23.52% more cooking power, 26.55% increase in efficiency. The modified solar cooker comes under the “A grade” class as per guidelines laid down by the Bureau of Indian Standard. This paper describes this work in the concise form.