Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Wind Speed on the Performance of a Portable Parabolic Solar Cooker from Energy and Exergy Viewpoints

In this study, a portable parabolic solar cooker is designed and fabricated, and the daily performance of the solar cooker is investigated from the energy and exergy viewpoints. One of the important challenges of the parabolic solar cookers is the reduction of their performance in the windy conditions. In order to evaluate this issue, the effect of 0.2, 2, 4 and 6m/s wind speeds on the energy and exergy efficiencies of the solar cooker is studied. Based on the results, the energy efficiency of the parabolic solar cooker is 34.52-46.19% and the exergy efficiency is 2.11-5.60% during the experiment. The experimental results indicate that water can boil in the windy conditions using the fabricated solar cooker although the time required to boil water increases by rising the wind speed. According to the results, in the wind speed of 6m/s, the time taken to boil 2 liters of water is about 40min. Furthermore, the energy and exergy efficiencies of the parabolic solar cooker in the wind speed of 6m/s are 20.08% and 1.99%, respectively, lower than those in the wind speed of 0.2m/s.