The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Solar Cooker

a domestic solar-powered device for the preparation of food. The principal component of a solar cooker is a concentrating solar collector. Most often a paraboloidal reflector, the collector focuses the sun’s rays on the surface of a radiation receiver, such as a pot or a teakettle. In general, the concentrating collectors used in solar cookers do not provide a very high accuracy of focusing, since a high energy density on the receiver’s surface would make the cooker difficult to use. The relative increase in radiant flux density in a solar cooker usually does not exceed 250. The concentrating collector is turned by hand to follow the apparent motion of the sun. The efficiency of solar cookers reaches 55–60 percent. In the USSR, solar cookers are passing from the experimental stage into lot production.

References in periodicals archive

The experience with solar cookers in Ethiopia revealed that, while enabling refugee families to substitute some of their fuelwood or charcoal consumption, adoption of the "Cookit" solar cooker encountered some barriers related to its slow cooking speed and inability to meet the requirements of above-average family sizes.

Reducing environmental damage caused by the collection of cooking fuel by refugees

* Making and using a solar cooker (plans available from the Catholic Committee of Appalachia office).

Power down in solidarity with all creation

Keep turning your "solar cooker" to follow the sun as it moves across the sky.

Weekly lab

Solar Cooker introduces an interesting and different way to toast marshmallows for s'mores, and Planetary Play is an educational dramatic activity.

Science Is...

This happened to the spiral Fresnel point-focus reflector, a solar cooker that was introduced in 1979 by Rick Steenblik, then a cooperative education student at Georgia Tech.

Appropriate technology: designing to fit local culture

The Sheffler community solar cooker was invented by Wolfgang Sheffler in 1986 [13, 14].

Determination of Performance Measuring Parameters of an Improved Dual Paraboloid Solar Cooker

That day, using only hand tools, I built my own "yard appliance." This solar cooker requires only cheap materials and the design is so simple: square, with an inner box and an outer box separated by 1 or 2 inches of insulation, and a glass cover on the inner box to let in sunlight.

Everyday solar cooking: if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and cook with free power from the sun

Under village electrification program, clean drinking water will be provided through use of solar water disinfector and solar cooker will also be used to avoid unnecessary cutting of trees in rural areas.

EXPLOITING SOLAR ENERGY POTENTIAL TO MEET THE POWER DEMAND

Disseminated 215 solar cookers (Dish Type), 653 solar cooker (Box Type) of family size and 13 solar dryers (seven solar dryer of 50 kgs per day capacity) three in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and four in Punjab, remaining are used in the country as a prototype.

Solar energy panacea to power shortage

The National Weather Service said the heat index was going to be around 100 degrees, so I knew it was time to soak some beans and get out the solar cooker box.

Our favorite bun warmer

Participants learned how to assemble and prepare meals with a parabolic solar cooker and how to make their own fuel-efficient stove and recycled fire bricks from wastepaper products.

A warm meal a day: solar cooking, fuel efficient stoves and recycled firebricks are introduced to southern communities

Step-by-step how-to information details how to make a solar cooker, grow tomatoes in a pot, preserve the food you've grown, raise chickens on a tiny plot, and much more.

Back to the land in the city