Volume 9 Issue 4 ( December 2022 )

The greenhouse gas emission in atmosphere has been increasing day by day and cooking is one of the primary reasons for this due to the burning of fossile fuels. In the current research article, the thermal performance of solar pressurize cooker has been investigated experimentally. It is an indirect type of cooker setup in which a pressurized cooker and solar collector are placed apart.
Heat transfer fluid is used to transmit heat from a conical receiver to a cooking pot. The cooking potential of the cooker is observed by cooking different edible food at different cooking loads. The cooking is done by circulating heat transfer fluid. Also, energy and exergy analysis have been done for the pressurized cooking used for heating 2 liter of water.
The water in cooking pot took 65 minutes to reach the temperature of 100℃. The maximum energy and exergy efficiency values are found to be 32.62% and 22.11%, respectively, whereas, the average energy and exergy efficiency are determined to be 10.58% and 7.08%, respectively. The temperature of heat transfer fluid reached upto 170℃, and the maximum temperature in cooking pot achieved to 151℃.
It is observed that cooking system can cook different kinds of edible foods of different cooking load. The system is able to cook at medium temperatures for almost six hours. The system has been successfully tested with a maximum cooking load of 3 litres. The system is long-lasting and requires minimal maintenance.

Keywords: Solar cooking, parabolic dish collector, conical receiver, heat transfer fluid, exergy and energy.