Solar Cooking

Principles of Solar Box Cooker Design

By Mark Aalfs , Solar Cookers International
e-mail: aalfs@yahoo.com

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the basic principles that are used in the design of solar box cookers.

People use solar cookers primarily to cook food and pasteurize water, although additional uses are continually being developed. Numerous factors including access to materials, availability of traditional cooking fuels, climate, food preferences, cultural factors, and technical capabilities, affect people's approach to solar cooking.

With an understanding of basic principles of solar energy and access to simple materials such as cardboard, aluminum foil, and glass, one can build an effective solar cooking device. This paper outlines the basic principles of solar box cooker design and identifies a broad range of potentially useful construction materials.

These principles are presented in general terms so that they are applicable to a wide variety of design problems. Whether the need is to cook food, pasteurize water, or dry fish or grain; the basic principles of solar, heat transfer, and materials apply. We look forward to the application of a wide variety of materials and techniques as people make direct use of the sun's energy.

More from The Solar Cooking Archive

A SUMMARY OF WATER PASTEURIZATION TECHNIQUES

In this document water pasteurization has been presented as a way of providing clean drinking water in developing countries. Several techniques for pasteurizing water have been presented here.

Some of these methods are less expensive, some produce more water per day, and some are in the form of a compact device that is easy to ship and set up in the field. Pasteurization is only one way of providing clean water.

The purpose of this document is not to say that pasteurization is the best way of providing drinking water or to say that one pasteurization technique is necessarily better than other.

As always, the selection of a method for providing clean water should be based on local conditions, and the selection process should include a variety of social factors as well as the technical and cost factors explored here.

Field experience shows that education is also necessary to achieve successful results with any water system.

Read the rest at SolarCooking.org