Influence of the steel fibers amount inside the box on the solar cooker performance: An experimental approach
Saif Ali Kadhim, Osama Abd Al‐Munaf Ibrahim, Moafaq K.S. Al-Ghezi, Ali M. Ashour, Issa Omle, Abdallah Bouabidi
Abstract
Despite their many advantages, the relatively low thermal performance of the box-type solar cookers remains a challenge to their widespread application and deployment compared to conventional cookers. Accordingly, this experimental study aims to develop a box-shaped solar cooker by selecting the optimal amount of steel fibers (filling) between the tray and the cooking pot, after a previous study demonstrated that these fibers enhance thermal performance. To obtain a reasonable evaluation, three boxes of the same size were manufactured and tested under the same outdoors conditions. The steel fiber masses per square meter of cooking tray were 1.45×10 −2 , 2.90×10 −2 and 4.35×10 −2 kg.m −2 for configurations 1, 2, and 3, respectively. The boxes were tested in two conditions, one without reflector mirrors and the other with reflector mirrors, each with a merit figure, thermal efficiency, exergy efficiency and thermo-optic ratio were adopted as comparative performance parameters. The results showed that reflector mirror enhanced thermal and optical performance and that configuration 2 demonstrated superior thermal performance both without and with the reflector mirror for all the comparative parameters shown, with the second figure of merit increased by 60.94, 32.37 % and 24.0, 9.82 % for configuration 2 in Case 1, compared to configurations 1 and 3, respectively. This study documents the importance of selecting optimal fillers in calculated quantities and provides prospects for the use of mineral fibers in solar cookers, which can be obtained free of charge from workshop and factory waste.