DESIGN, SIMULATION, CONSTRUCTION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A SOLAR OVEN

📄 Project Abstract

A solar ovenis a device that converts solar energy into useful heat in a confined space (oven chamber) which can be utilised for cooking and baking purposes.The oven consists of plane reflectors to concentrate the solar radiation on the collector.The heat gain is maximum if the collector and reflectors are continuously adjusted such that the incidence angle of the reflected and direct radiations are minimised. In practise, it is always difficult to manually track the movement of the sun and the use of trackers can be very expensive. As such, an analytical model was developed to evaluate the optimum monthly collector and reflector tilts for maximum output hen employing the single axis tracking mode. The operation of the different components of the oven was modelled using TRNSYS, Microsoft Excel and EES programs alongside solar data for Zaria. Optimisation of the design was carried out based onweather conditions prevalent on the average day of the design month i.e. the month with the lea...