Standardised power of solar cookers with a linear performance curve following the Hottel-Whillier-Bliss formulation
Celestino Rodrigues Ruivo, Gianluca Coccia, Giovanni Di Nicola, Antonio Carrillo de Andrés, Xabier Apaolaza-Pagoaga
Abstract
In the present work, an improvement of protocol widely used for reporting the thermal behaviour of solar cookers is communicated to the scientific community. The linear regression used to represent the standardised cooking power is based on the well-known Hottel-Whillier-Bliss equation written in dimensionless format. The authors’ new formulation procedure for estimating the standardised power includes a correction for the difference between the load temperature and the ambient air temperature of the procedure of ASAE S580.1 Standard. It is derived from a simple theoretical deduction, similar to the ones usually applied to solar thermal flat collectors. The correction factor relates itself with the ratio between the measured solar irradiance and the solar irradiance chosen as a standard value. As one example, test results of a funnel cooker loaded with water are used to show the impact of the improvement of the procedure for reporting performance of a solar cooker. The procedure is valid only for solar cookers evidencing a clear linear performance curve.