Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Objectives: One of clean technology applications in daily human life activity is the use of solar thermal energy, such as for rice cooking. As a country where most of its territory is on the equator, this environmentally friendly solar cooker can be reversed due to the high intensity of radiation received throughout the day. Therefore, design and trial run ofsolar cooker with parabolic collector has been done. Methods and Analysis: The collector produced has a diameter of 150 cm, depth 60 cm and the length of the focal point of 23.44 cm. The parabolic equation resulted is X2 = 93.76 Y or Y = 0.01067 X2 . The collector is made of aluminum plates coated with aluminum foil on the surface and isolated with Rockwool at the bottom. While the cooking pot (absorber) is made of aluminum with a diameter of 20 cm and a height of 14 cm. Findings: From this dimension a concentration ratio of 56.25 is obtained. The trial results on cooking 400 grams of rice (ratio of rice: water = 1: 1) showed that cooking time and thermal efficiency were strongly influenced by solar irradiation. Applications: The optimum condition was achieved at an average solar irradiation of 520 W/m2 ,which obtained 90 minutes of cooking time with 56% thermal efficiency.

Keywords: Design, Parabolic, Performance, Solar Cooker