sun fire cooking

[hammock monkey]

an african friend has been telling me about this:
http://www.tucacas.info/sunfirecooking/index.htm

great idea, i guess there'd be plenty of other uses for the parabola / dishes. if i can get to africa next year i'd love to try it out. has anyone else used one?

 

[Bushman_Brett]

iv made the smaller solar hot dog roaster thats kicking around on the net, works in the english summers , been looking at the solar dishes for a foreign climate solar still and solar boiler steam engined genny

 

[gregorach]

Back in Oz, I used a much simpler solar cooker. It's basically two cardboard boxes, one inside the other, with insulating material in the space inbetween. You then line the inner box with foil , put a black metal plate in the bottom, a sheet of glass over the top, and make a simple reflector from another bit of cardboard lined with foil. Doesn't get up to high temperatures, but you can cook in it just fine as long as you're not in a hurry.

There are instructions available here: Solar Box Cooker.

Highest temperature I ever saw in it was about 150 deg C - just perfect for baking cakes! I did once do a full roast dinner, but it took a while...

 

[hammock monkey]

i was thinking about running a steam engine off the sun fire cooker.... shame the great Fred Dibnah's not around eh!?

 

[gregorach]

You'd probably be better running a Sterling engine - a decent steam engine needs a lot of heat. There are actually a couple of experimental solar power stations using parabolic arrays and sterling engines.

 

[Bushman_Brett]

theres also a few parabolic mirror boiler steam engined gennys knocking around on the net sterling engines are great but more difficult to make, have a shorter lifespan due to needing closer tolerances and cant create so much power in smaller hobby size engines.

 

[gregorach]

Yeah, but they're so cool.