Comparative assessment of two different designs of box solar cookers under algerian sahara conditions

This paper deals with the experimental study of two box-type solar cookers equipped with booster mirrors and suitable for cooking a single family’s food. The first one has a conventional, ordinary horizontal aperture area and the second one has an inclined aperture area. The latter is a new configuration which allows for much higher solar radiation interception, resulting in better cooking performance, especially in the winter when the sun’s elevation is low. Optimum inclination angles of the booster mirrors were calculated in order to maximize the reflection of the solar rays on the absorber plates. The cooking performance of the proposed new cooker was compared with the conventional box solar cooker of the same material and surface during Winter 2013 in the Ghardaîa Sahara climate (32.39°N, 3.78°E), Algeria. According to the values of some essential thermal performance parameters suggested by International Standards and evaluated by experimental studies, the inclined aperture area improves the thermal performance of the box-type solar cooker remarkably, reducing cooking time considerably. The first and second figures of merit for the improved cooker, respectively, were 0.15 and 0.47 compared to 0.13 and 0.38 for the conventional cooker.