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You must definitely be
familiar with the standard box-type ‘Surya’
Cooker. Numerous households all over the country
are using it to cook their meals. This
family-sized cooker can cook meals for 4-5
persons. A larger version of the family size
box-type cooker was also developed and used for
canteen application. The canteen size solar
cookers are just larger in size and can cook for
10-15 persons. What if you wish to cook for 50 –
100 people? A large Community Solar Cooker has
been developed with Solar Concentrator technology.
It is an ideal cooking device for hostels,
ashramshalla, etc.
This Concentrator Type Solar Cooker has been
designed & developed by Mr. Wolfgang Scheffler, a
German Engineer.
Firewood is the most commonly used cooking fuel in
community kitchens and traditional woodstove - a
“chulha” are the most commonly used cooking
device. These chulhas have an efficiency of 5-10 %
only. The implications of utilizing such
inefficient devices are higher fuel consumption &
environment pollution. As a result more trees are
felled each year for meeting the ever-increasing
energy demands. This leads to rapid deforestation
and environment degradation. In addition, the
smoke from chulhas causes serious health hazard to
kitchen workers. The Community Solar Cooker, in
contrast, poses no such health hazards as it
utilizes ‘the freely available eco-friendly solar
energy from nature.
This Community Solar Cooker employs a parabolic
reflecting concentrator that can cook large
quantities of food at much faster rate. The best
part is that the cooking can take place within an
enclosed kitchen just as by any other alternative
methods? Unbelievable? But True! This Cooker with
its design can be extremely useful and convenient
for dharmshalas, ashram shalas, hostels or any
type of community kitchens. It can replace LPG,
kerosene and firewood which are either cumbersome
to use, very expensive or which are in short
supply.
This Cooker is technologically far superior to the
box-type community cooker, having overcome a
number of shortcomings of the box type cooker.
This cooker is capable of achieving higher
temperature upto 250 degree C as against 100-125
deg.C in box type cooker. This helps cooking much
faster. The conventional cooking arrangement
within the kitchen does not require to be changed
and the cooking can be done inside the kitchen.
Additionally roasting & frying can be done with
this cooker which is not possible in the old box
type solar cooker. |
