HYBRID INDIRECT SOLAR COOKER WITH LATENT HEAT STORAGE

Solar cooking is the simplest, safest, most convenient way to cook food without consuming fuels or heating up the kitchen. All the conventional solar cooker designs have the disadvantage of inability to cook during off-shine and night hours.This disadvantage can be eliminated if the solar cooker is designed with thermal storage arrangement. In this paper, a hybrid solar cooker with evacuated tube collector and latent thermal storage unit and alternate electric heatingsource is simulated. The heat transfer fluid gets heated in the evacuated tube collector is used for cooking along with alternate electric heating source.The phase changing material takes heat from working fluid and this heat is used for cooking during off shine and night hours with the inclusion of a heat exchanger . The hot working fluid flows in upwards direction because of thermosyphon phenomena. The vacuum in the evacuated tube collector allows the tube to act both as a super greenhouse and an insulator. This design allows to cook food inside the kitchen also helpful to keep food warm till late night hours. Performance improvement can be achieved using different nanofluids as working fluid.