Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

This paper presents the design, development and on-field studies of a low cost solar cooker which can act as a promising solution towards reducing the adverse impacts of indoor air pollution on the health of women and children of developing countries. The developed low cost solar cooker has been fabricated mainly through packaging cardboard, used oil tins, packaging insulation material, light weight polymeric glaze and reflector. The study reveals that the temperature profiles of the developed solar cooker are slightly better than the commercially available fibre body solar cooker. The figures of merit (F1 & F2) for the low cost solar cooker are 0.122 and 0.55 which are higher as compared to the commercial solar cooker values of 0.115 and 0.43. The payback periods for the developed solar cooker with respect to various fuels such as firewood, kerosene, LPG, coal and electricity are in the range of three months to less than 2 years.
Keywords: Solar cooker, on-field study, payback periods, figures of merit, indoor air pollution.