Influence of the aperture area on the performance of a solar funnel cooker operating at high sun elevations using glycerine as load

Five funnel solar cookers have been tested to investigate the influence of the aperture area on their performance. The largest cooker had an aperture area of 0.5 m(2) and it was tested side by side with two other two smaller cookers. Each cooker was tested with the same amount of glycerine.The linear performance curves relating the efficiency with the specific temperature difference was determined. Then, the determined regressions of the cooker opto-thermal ratio and the reference time on the aperture area were used to predict: i) the influence of the solar irradiance and the aperture area on the maximum temperature achieved by the load, ii) the time duration required for achieving load temperature from 65 to 140 degrees C, and iii) the power of the cooker. It was found that for a solar irradiance range of 600-1100 W m (2), the pasteurization temperature can be achieved even by the smallest cooker, and the efficiency of the largest cooker is close to the efficiency of a cooker with optimum aperture area. Moreover, when using the largest cooker, under an irradiance of 1100 W m (2) and ambient temperature 20 degrees C, the load can achieve 180 degrees C, implying that frying is possible