feature article

I Z A T I O N OF

Y O P T I M T H H E AT
E R
EN OLAG R C O OK I N
R CO
G WI
N T R O L
Y B R ID S A N S FE
H
A S S TR
M

Prasanna U R and Dr L Umanand

Centre for Electronic Design and Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore – 560012

I
ndia is currently the world’s fifth According to an Indian government The conventional box type cooker
largest consumer of energy, survey, in 2001, 52.5% of people use design has been studied and modified
accounting for 3.7% of worldwide firewood for cooking, while LPG is since the 1980s and various designs
energy consumption. The energy used by 17.5% of the population. Half and their characteristics have been
for cooking accounts for 36% of of the world’s population is exposed to extensively investigated. Box type
the total primary energy consumption. indoor air pollution, mainly the result cooker with multiple reflectors are easy
The wood cut for cooking purpose of burning solid fuels for cooking and to build but difficult to use for cooking,
contributes to the 16 million hectares of heating. as it has to be done outdoor.
forest destroyed annually. The cooking In this regard, solar cookers are Hot box ovens and concentrating
energy demand in the rural areas of expected to contribute considerably solar cookers are cheap and effective.
developing countries is largely met with towards meeting the domestic cooking However, they are limited to cooking
biofuels such as fuel wood, charcoal, energy requirement in a country like during clear sky periods and require
agricultural residues, and dung cakes, India, which is blessed with abundant the cook to work outdoors in rural
whereas LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) sunshine. On an average, India areas and on roof tops in urban areas.
and electricity are predominantly used receives 5 kWh/day/m2 of sunlight for Though parabolic cookers are used for
in urban areas. Different energy sources more than 300 days of a year. Solar fast cooking, the cooking rate cannot
for cooking have been evaluated and cooker is an environment-friendly and be controlled, and it is potentially
LPG stoves were found to be the most cost-effective device for harnessing hazardous due to the focusing of sun
preferred cooking device in India. solar energy. beam. These types of solar cookers do

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not provide for interactive cooking,

which is prevalent in the regular cooking
procedures of the Indian kitchen. Solar
cooker has not been readily accepted
by the Indians due to the reason that
cooking has to be done outdoor and
it is completely dependent on the
availability of solar insolaton.
For a solar cooking system to be
accepted and adopted in most of the
households, the following objectives
have to be satisfied.
1. The cooking should be done without Figure 1  Block schematic of the hybrid solar cooking system
moving out of the kitchens.
2. It should reduce the use of The energy extracted from the Sun is heat loss to ambient. Hence, this causes
conventional energy. stored in the buffer tank. The size of lower collector heat transfer. Increasing
3. Cooking can be carried out at any this tank is decided by the amount of the flow rate will not only disturb the
time of day/night. energy that needs to be stored for late density stratification of the fluid in the
4. Time taken for cooking must be night or early morning cooking and storage tank, but also necessitate more
comparable with conventional the amount of energy that needs to energy for pumping the fluid against
cooking. be saved from other energy sources the hydraulic resistance of the pipes,
of the hybrid system. Whenever food even though the heat removal factor
In order to satisfy the above- has to be cooked, the stored energy is improves. There exists an optimal
mentioned objectives, a hybrid solar transferred to the load through the heat flow rate for which it is possible to
cooking technique has been proposed exchanger using pump-II, which varies extract maximum energy from the
and designed, wherein the solar the flow rate of the fluid through the collector. By dynamically varying the
energy is transferred to the kitchen heat exchanger. The auxiliary source flow rate, maximum energy can be
and supplements the conventional of energy like LPG or electrical energy drawn as insolation varies. This optimal
LPG source. is used for supplementing the stored flow rate depends on many factors
solar energy. This also reduces the time like solar insolation, and sizing of
System description and required for cooking, as compared pipe, storage tank, and collector. The
operation to the previously proposed cooking flow rate at which maximum power
The block diagram of the proposed systems like box-type cookers. Energy can be extracted for a given input
cooking system is shown in Figure 1. required from the auxiliary source is to solar insolation also depends on the
The solar thermal collector is in general be optimized for the given system based characteristic of the centrifugal pump.
placed at a high location, preferably on the availability of solar insolation at The MPPT (maximum power point
on the roof top. A cylindrical (linear) the location and the load profile. tracking) controller should sense the
parabolic collector, a paraboloid, or The central goal of the proposed collected power and accordingly vary
a concentrating collector is used to system is to transfer heat from the the flow rate q1 to the optimal value.
collect solar energy and increase the solar collector to the load. There If very small diameter pipes are
temperature of the fluid. The heat are two levels of heat transfer with used, then it increases the hydraulic
exchanger is placed in the kitchen intermediate energy storage in a buffer resistance, resulting in pressure drop
where the cooking is done. It transfers tank. The heat is first transferred from and hence, very poor performance.
heat from the circulating fluid to the the solar collector to the storage tank. On the other hand, if we go for higher
cooking load. All other components are Pump-I controls the fluid flow rate q1 diameter pipes, surface area of the
placed at intermediate levels according to control the heat transfer from the pipe increases, which decreases the
to the building requirements. Pump-I collector to tank. At lower flow rates, conductive and convective thermal
is used to vary the flow rate of the fluid the temperature of the collector and resistance. As a consequence, the
through the solar thermal collector. outlet fluid is higher resulting in higher efficiency of the system comes down

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Figure 2  Energy flow diagram of the system

due to increase in conductive and which is fixed at the focus of the

Table 1  Temperature set points for
convective heat transfer coefficient paraboloid, as shown in Figure 4. Linear
cooking
between the pipe and the atmosphere. actuator controls the angle of tilt made
Temperature  
Thus, for a given location and cooking by the paraboloid in order to track the
in ºC Application
load profile, there exists an optimal pipe Sun continuously.
65 Keeping liquids hot
diameter for which energy extracted is A stainless steel pipe with thermal
85 Simmering of food
maximal. 95 Boiling of food insulation is used to carry hot fluid
Power from the auxiliary source, like 116 Steam pressure cooker from heat storage tank to the receiver
LPG or electrical heater, is controlled 175 Deep frying and back to the buffer tank. The buffer
according to the load requirement and tank is made up of stainless steel and
availability of the stored energy and thermally insulated using mineral wool.
solar energy. Energy taken from this The proposed system is a complex Servotherm oil is circulated through the
source has to be minimized so as to multi-energy domain system concentrator using a rotary gear pump.
optimize the savings of LPG. comprising of energy flow across several On the load side circulation, hot oil is
Figure 2 shows the energy flow in domains such as thermal, electrical, and circulated from the heat buffer through
the described cooking system. Solar hydraulic. The entire system is modelled the heat exchanger using another
thermal collector absorbs solar energy, using the bond graph approach with pump. Temperature sensors are placed
which is used to heat up the fluid. During seamless integration of the power flow at different points to measure the
this process, part of the energy is lost in these domains. It is simulated and the temperature. Flow rate of the collector
to ambient and the remaining energy results are validated experimentally. side and the load side circulation is
is stored in the heat storage tank as measured using two flow meters. Figure
buffer. The heat transferred from solar Design 3, 4, and 5 show the experimental setup
energy to the storage tank is dependent Hybrid solar cooking system is being of the cooking system.
on the flow rate of the circulating fluid. setup to supply the energy requirement
This heat transfer rate is controlled of a canteen near CEDT
by using a hydraulic pump. Energy is (Centre for Electronic Design
transferred from the storage tank to and Technology) at IISc
the load through the heat exchanger. (Indian Institute of Science),
This flow of energy is controlled by Bangalore. Paraboloid
the flow rate of fluid through the heat solar concentrator is used
exchanger. Energy requirement for to raise the temperature
the load, in addition to solar energy, of servotherm oil, which is
is provided by the auxiliary source of used as heat transferring
energy like LPG or electrical energy. fluid. Anodized aluminium
(a) buffer tank, (b) buffer-collector pump, (c) buffer-load pump,  
The load temperature requirements of sheets are used to reflect (d) heat exchanger, (e) flow meter
typical Indian households is as follows. sunlight on to the receiver, Figure 3  Experimental setup of the cooking system

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Results and discussions

Experiments have been carried
out on a small-scale laboratory
prototype as shown in figure
6. The temperature at different
parts of the system is measured.
Experimental results are
compared with the simulation
Figure 4  Solar parabolic collector
results within 5% error. Effective
collector efficiency and overall
system efficiency is calculated
for different flow rates and
different pipe diameters from
the bond graph model as shown
in figure 7 and 8.

Estimated energy savings

Figure 5  Experimental setup
In a typical Indian household of
Figure 6  Lab prototype of the solar cooking
five members, one LPG cylinder
system

lasts approximately a month. One

LPG cylinder containing 14 kg of LPG
contains 170 kWh of energy. Thus, in a
month 170 kWh of energy is utilized for
cooking purposes by a typical Indian
household. A 1m radius paraboloid
has a cross section area of around
3.14 m2 presented to the Sun. At an
average irradiance of 5kWh/m2/day,
the amount of energy incident on the
surface for a month of 30 days is 471kWh.
Considering the collection efficiency as
20% (typical), about 90kWh is available
Figure 7  Variation in effective collector efficiency every month. Thus, the LPG should last
twice as long if used with the proposed
system.

Conclusion
The hybrid solar cooking device has
been designed to bring solar energy
directly to the kitchen. Using heat
storage buffer, cooking can be carried
out at any time of the day or night.
The user need not have to completely
depend on solar insolation, as the
remaining energy is supplied by
conventional source of energy like LPG
or electrical.
Figure 8  Variation in overall efficiency

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