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Thermal performance enhancement on a box-type solar cooker using a triangular fin over a conventional cooking pot
•The first figure of merit for the triangular finned cooking pot is found to be 0.139 which is better than the conventional cooking pot configuration i.e., 0.132.•The cooking power is increased from 68.71 W to 77.06 W for the triangular finned cooking pot compared with the conventional cooking pot u...
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Published in: | Solar energy 2023-07, Vol.258, p.339-350 |
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Main Authors: | , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Citations: | Items that this one cites Items that cite this one |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | •The first figure of merit for the triangular finned cooking pot is found to be 0.139 which is better than the conventional cooking pot configuration i.e., 0.132.•The cooking power is increased from 68.71 W to 77.06 W for the triangular finned cooking pot compared with the conventional cooking pot under 1.5 kg water loading conditions.•The energy efficiency is increased from 36.16 % to 40.55 % when using a triangular finned cooking pot instead of the conventional cooking pot under 1.5 kg water loading.•Adding different insulation materials of low thermal conductivity at the walls compared with the edges of box type solar cooker is preferred.
The thermal performance of existing box-type solar cookers is limited and to improve the performance many research works reported on modification of solar cooker sub-systems i.e., cylindrical fin over the cooking pot, extra air duct, integrating with a photovoltaic panel, incorporation of heat storage materials and multiple reflectors. This paper presents a novel study of a triangular-finned cooking pot to increase the convective heat transfer rate and solar irradiance over the cooking pot. The thermal network diagram is presented and thermal losses are measured using MATLAB. The thermal visualization is presented with the help of COMSOL Multiphysics 5.5 and uncertainty analysis of different performance parameters is completed with Engineering Equation Solver (EES). The simulation results found thermal losses occur from the top, bottom and side are 4.26, 0.77 and 0.64 W/m2 respectively. The experimentally observed result indicates the cooking time is reduced from 94–95 min to 85–86 min during the boiling test of 1.5 kg water for the triangular finned cooking pot. The first figure of merit is 0.139 and the second figure of merit is 0.563 respectively for the same loading conditions. The cooking power is increased from 68.71 W to 77.06 W. The thermal efficiency is increased from 36.16 % to 40.55 %. The uncertainty analysis emphasizes the value of the performance parameter lies within an acceptable range. From thermal visualization, It is concluded that wall edges are less affected by heat flow and the correct placement of the cooking pot is necessary for uniform heating. |
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ISSN: | 0038-092X |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.solener.2023.03.053 |