Abstract:
There is urgent need of switching over to a perennial sourceof energy reserve as a
powerful alternative so as to replace all the fastest depleting fossil fuels.The solar
box cooker depends on the sun energy whereas gas burner and coal pot depend on
gas and charcoal as fuel. The purpose of the study is to design, construct and
evaluate the performance of solar box cooker using locally available materials.
Moreover, this study aimed to compare the constructed solar box cooker with
charcoal and gas in terms of cooking time and energy cost. The constructed solar
cooker relatively showed better performance in cooking different food for a large
family. The dimension for the sides of the box used was 600mm x 500mm x
590mm representing the top two corners and height of the box. Also, the end part
of the box before the base has outer and inner dimensions namely: 500mm and
470mm respectively while the dimension of the absorber plate which was divided
into three parts namely; Top, middle, and base because the box is not having equal
dimensions. The Top dimension was 500mm x 440mm.The middle has 445mm x
410mm and the base has 410mm x 410mm. Efficiency was noted to have increased
with decreasing temperature differences between absorber plate and ambient (air)
temperature (TC-Ta). Increase in temperature does not necessarily lead to increase in
efficiency. Efficiency decreased with decreasing sunlight. The Solar Box Cooker
(SBC) after being constructed and tested has 98.6% efficiency and its energy
required to cook food was realized too be 410.849KJ. The energy required for
charcoal and gas to cook food ranges from 1.664KJ,1.536KJ,1.6KJ and
906.048KJ,878.592KJ, 878.592KJ respectively were recorded under the various
weather conditions. This implies that gas burns faster than charcoal. It is therefore
recommended that Solar Box Cooker should be used to combined with modified
charcoal stove to cook food.
Description:
A Thesis in the Department of MECHANICAL AND AUTOMOTIVE
TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION, Faculty of Technical Education, Submitted to
the School of Graduate Studies, University of Education Winneba, in partial
fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Philosophy
(Mechanical Engineering Technology) degree