Problem number 5 Are there advantages and disadvantages in using Solar Heated Grill?

Advantages:
Solar cookers use no fuel, which means that their users do not need to fetch or pay for firewood, gas, electricity, or other fuels. Therefore, over time a solar cooker can pay for itself in reduced fuel costs. Since it reduces firewood use, the solar cooker reduces deforestation and habitat loss. Since there are about 2 billion people who are still cooking on open fires, widespread use of solar cookers could have large economic and environmental benefits. Solar box cookers attain temperatures of up to about 165 deg. C (325 deg. F), so they can be used to sterilize water or prepare most foods that can be made in a conventional oven or stove, from baked bread to steamed vegetables to roasted meat. When solar ovens are placed outside, they do not contribute unwanted heat inside houses. Solar cookers do not produce any smoke as a product of combustion. The indoor concentration of health-damaging pollutants from a typical wood-fired cooking stove creates carbon monoxide and other noxious fumes at anywhere between seven and 500 times over the allowable limits. Fire-based cooking also produces ashes and soot, which make the home dirtier. However, any type of cooking, including solar cooking, can evaporate grease, oil, etc., from the food into the air. Unlike cooking over an open fire, children cannot be burned by touching many types of solar cookers, which are made from cardboard or plastic and do not get hot. Unlike all fuel-based cooking arrangements, these solar cookers are not fire hazards. However, solar cookers that concentrate sunlight, e.g. with paraboloidal reflectors, do produce high temperatures which could cause injury or fire.

Disadvantages:
Solar cookers are less usable in cloudy weather and at high latitudes, so some fuelbased backup heat source must still be available in these conditions. Also, solar cooking provides hot food during or shortly after the hottest part of the day, rather than the evening when most people like to eat. The "integrated solar cooking" concept accepts these limitations, and includes a fuel-efficient stove and an insulated heat storage container to provide a complete solution. Many solar cookers take longer time to cook food than a fuel-based oven. Using these solar cookers therefore requires that food preparation be started several hours before the meal. However, it requires less hands-on time cooking, so this is often considered a reasonable trade-off.

Cooks may need to learn special cooking techniques to fry common foods, such as fried eggs or flatbreads like chapattis and tortillas. It may not be possible to safely or completely cook some thick foods, such as large roasts, loaves of bread, or pots of soup, particularly in small panel cookers; the cook may need to divide these into smaller portions before cooking. Some solar cooker designs are affected by strong winds, which can slow the cooking process, cool the food, and disturb the reflector. In these cases it is necessary to anchor the reflector with string and weights.

REFERENCE: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cooker

Problem number 1 Is it possible to cook foods without using Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), and use SOLAR ENERGY instead?

-YES.
One way people sometimes describe a really hot day is to say, "It's so hot, you could fry an egg on the ground." Well, how about cooking vegetables in a box in the sun? You can do this using the rays from the sun. This is called cooking with solar energy. Cooking with solar energy is an idea that is getting a lot of attention, especially in countries with hot, sunny weather. That's because the world is running out of energy sources such as coal, oil and gas. Fuel wood is also hard to find. And people are worried about the damage to the environment and to people's health when these energy sources are burned. This is not a problem when you cook using solar energy. How do you do it? Well, you can use something called a solar cooker. There are a few different kinds of solar cookers. Some have pipes, wires, and coils that not only catch the sun's energy but hold it so you can cook later on at night or on cloudy days. These are called storage cookers. Others cook by using steam heat from water heated by the sun, but they are complicated to make and don't reach high temperatures. These are called steam cookers. The simplest and least expensive solar cooker to make or buy is called a solar box cooker. This cooker can be made out of wood or cardboard. It is a box inside a bigger box with lots of insulation between them. You can use feathers, wool, spun fiber glass, or wall sized cardboard pieces covered with foil as insulation. Both boxes are low and wide. The small inner box is where you put your pots. The inside of the smaller box is covered with shiny Aluminum foil. The bottom is painted black or holds a dark metal tray. A sheet of glass covers the two boxes and on top of that there is a lid that can open and close, like a door. The inside of this lid also has shiny foil or a mirror on it. When the lid is open, the foil or mirror catches the sun's rays and directs them through the glass cover and into the box. The dark bottom inside the box absorbs the heat of the sun, and the shiny sides direct the rays onto the pots. The pots have to be dark to absorb and hold all the heat. The glass plate cover keeps the heat inside. On a sunny day, the temperature inside the cooker can reach 95 150 degrees Celsius, so the food cooks well. For example, an egg can cook in about 45 minutes, potatoes can cook in 3 4 hours, and large pieces of meat can cook in 5 8 hours. To cook food as fast as possible, let the box get hot for 30 minutes before cooking, and keep moving the box every few hours to face the sun as it changes direction. There are several reasons to cook using energy from the sun. Cooking with solar energy saves fuel wood and is much less expensive than using fuels like coal, oil and gas. In fact, it's free! Cooking with solar energy doesn't create smoke or harmful fumes so it's safer for whoever is preparing the food. It's also safer for the environment. What's more, the food often tastes better and is more nutritious. That's because you don't need to use much water - or any water at all - in the pot since the food is cooked slowly and evenly and can't burn as it can when you cook over a flame.

REFERENCE: http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries.html

Problem number 2

Are the foods cooked under the suns heat safe to eat?
Food safety for food cooked by any method requires meeting specific rigid conditions. Cooked food at temperatures between 125 F and 50 F (52 C - 10 C) can grow harmful bacteria. This temperature range is known as the danger zone. To protect against food poisoning, microbiologists and home economists strongly recommend that food be kept either above or below these temperatures. These precautions are the same whether food is cooked with gas, electricity, microwaves, wood fire, or solar heat as well as foods cooked by retained heat, crock pot, barbecue pit or any other method. In cooked food held at room temperature, there is a chance of Bacillus cereus food poisoning, a major intestinal illness. Worse, if the food is not thoroughly reheated before consumption, there is a chance of deadly botulism poisoning or salmonella. Even if it is reheated, when cooked food has been in the danger zone for three to four hours, there remains a risk of food poisoning in solar cooked food as in food cooked by any other method. It has been carefully documented with regard to solar box cookers that it is safe to place raw refrigerated or frozen food, even chicken or other meat, in a solar box cooker (SBC) in the morning several hours before the sun begins to cook it. Refrigerated food placed in an SBC remains sufficiently cold until the sun starts to heat the SBC. Once the full sun is on the oven, the heating of food proceeds quickly enough so that there is no danger of food poisoning. Uncooked grains, beans and other dried raw foods can also be placed in an SBC in advance. Both of these methods facilitate absentee cooking. There are three main points at which caution is required: it is dangerous to keep cooked food more than three or four hours in an unheated or cooling SBC unless both the SBC and food have been cooled rather quickly to below 50 F (10 C) in which case the SBC is serving as a cool box; it is dangerous to let cooked food remain overnight in an SBC unless it is likewise cooled; and it is dangerous for food to partially cook and then remain warm in the SBC when temperatures are not sustained as might occur on a poor solar cooking day, at the end of the day or when clouds move in. Cooked or partially cooked food should either be cooled to below 50 F (10 C) or cooking should be finished with an alternate fuel. If food has remained in the temperature danger zone for 3 to 4 hours it should be considered spoiled and should be discarded. Reheating the food does not correct the problem as heat does not inactivate all toxins. Food does not have to be visibly spoiled in order to be toxic and cause illness evidenced by nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Even if food has not been at the incubating temperatures of the danger zone for the full 3 to 4 hours, absolutely discard food that is bubbling, foaming, has a bad smell, is becoming discolored, or gives any other indication of spoilage. Discard it out of reach of animals and children and thoroughly wash the pot. Discard it without tasting it as even small amounts can make an adult very sick. If temperatures below 50 F (10 C) cannot be obtained, it is still valuable to drop food temperatures as low as possible and as quickly as possible rather than allowing food to remain warm since bacteria grow more slowly at lower temperatures. An alternative method of holding cooked food is to reliably maintain the temperature of the entire food mass above 125 F (53 C). This can be achieved by first heating the food to boiling, simmering for a few minutes to allow heat to penetrate to the center of each particle and for a pocket of steam to collect under the lid. Then proceed as for retained heat cooking. This provides the level of temperature needed throughout the food, whereas leaving a pot of food on a very small flame may allow food at the edges to remain in the danger zone.

REFERENCE: http://www.solarcooking.org/foodsafety.html

Problem number 3 Can the Solar Heated Grill improve health, mankind and environment?

The Solar Heated Grill can pasteurize household drinking water, making it safe to drink. Also, the solar cooking process is smokeless, reducing respiratory diseases and eye irritation. Solar cooked foods retain vitamins, nutrients, and their natural flavors; there is no smoky taste; the foods cook slowly in their own juices. Nutritious, slow-cooking traditional foods (beans, crops and some grains) are restored to the family diet. Clean up is easy as the food burns or sticks to the cooking pot. Solar cooks frequently report that the money they save on cooking fuel purchases is used for many essentials, such as extra food, school supplies and medical care. Without having to gather wood or dung, breathe smoke, and tend a fire all associated with traditional cooking solar cooking is easy and safe for people with AIDS and other illness, the elderly, disabled and young orphans. Also, solar cooking one meal a day, three times a week has been proven to reduce fuel wood consumption and related smoke by one third. This project saves more than four times its value in fuel wood each year. With careful use and storage, a solar cooker can be used for two years, reducing fuel wood consumption by two tones. It also reduces pressure on forests for fire wood and charcoal. This can help mankind in such a way that, each countryman will be industrious, resourceful and creative enough through this project.

REFERENCE: http://www.swissinfo.ch

Problem number 3 What recyclable materials can be used to make a solar cooker?
There are a couple key components to a solar cooker, or solar oven, including a reflective surface, a heat absorbing material, and a thermal isolating setup. The reflective surface is used to increase the intensity of light on the cooker and can be made of a mirror or reflective metal like aluminum foil. You can put the aluminum foil on cardboard so it is rigid, light weight, easier to work with. The heat absorbing material can be the pot or pan you cook in or should be in good thermal contact with the pot you use. The way to get the most heat for your oven from the sunlight is to absorb as much of the visible light as possible to convert it to thermal energy or heat. Objects that are black, like cast iron or black cloth/paper, are the best at this while reflective or light colored objects, like polished stainless steel or white cloth/paper, are the worst. Another important component of heating is the way the material transfers its heat to other materials (like the food you are cooking) which is called conducting heat. The better a pot conducts heat the better it will be at heating your food using the available heat in the solar oven. The final component is limiting airflow through the cooker so the warm air is not carried away as fast. This can be achieved by covering it, for example with a plastic, or by building a small wall, or digging a ditch, around the oven so only the upper portion is exposed. In simple designs the reflective surface doubles as a wind or breeze barrier keeping the surrounding moving air isolated from the cooker on all sides while remaining exposed to the sun from above. Solar ovens or solar cookers can be made in many different styles to optimize performance, but even the simplest setup will achieve significantly elevated temperatures on a sunny day. One of the most important materials is, of course, the reflectivesheeting or substance that is used for reflector panels and the lining for the interior of solar boxes. You can use a variety of reflective materials such as aluminum foil, Mylar, reflective tape, mirrors, aluminum printers plates and evenreflective paint. The reflective material for panels and lining can sometimes be the most difficult of the materials to obtain. Outside of aluminum foil the other reflective materials usually are found in specific businesses or industries and are not as readily available to the consumer public.You can find some of these reflective materials in craft, lumber, hardware and supply stores though.

REFERENCE: http://www.solarcooker-at-cantinawest.com