The Working Principles of a Solar Cooker

In the past few years, the hole in the ozone layer has been identified and monitored regularly. The increase in the hole size of the ozone layer is seriously alarming and a threat to human life. This made people give more and more attention to sustainable development.

Sustainable development introduced measures to conserve energy. One such measure is the innovation of solar cookers that cut off the consumption of any kind of fuel that possesses the risk to damage the environment.

It is a very nice option to switch to; however, it essential to know the principles on which a solar cooker works before learning how to build a solar cooker.

Just like a stove or an oven convert different energy sources to thermal energy to cook the food, solar cookers convert solar energy to thermal energy. This thermal energy is transferred throughout the cooker through the process of radiation.

Since there are no machines or complex mechanisms involved in the solar cookers, these are comparatively slow. For the food to be completely and properly cooked, it requires a sufficient amount of heat.

To gather this sufficient heat, the solar cooker must rest under the direct sunlight for quite some time. Materials such as aluminium foil are used that have higher heat capacity; means which have a greater tendency to absorb a large amount of heat.

While using the solar cooker, it is often advised to cover it with something; this would not let the heat to escape from the cooker and thus lead to cooking your food on time.

Since solar cookers completely function on solar energy, its efficiency relies on the sunlight totally. Therefore, in the rainy or windy seasons, when clouds hinder the sunlight from reaching the cooker, resulting in less or at times no sunlight, it cannot work at all.