Experimental and numerical analysis of tiltable box-type solar cooker with tracking mechanism

A tiltable box-type solar cooker was designed and fabricated to meet the cooking needs of a typical family of five in Sana'a, Yemen, which is currently experiencing an energy crisis as a result of the war that has been ongoing since 2015. The production cost of the cooker is US$74, which is affordable to Yemenis. The first figure of merit (F1), second figure of merit (F2), cooking power, and maximum stagnation temperature were found experimentally to be 0.1354 °Cm2/W, 0.4934, 63.53 W, and 172.75 °C, respectively. A numerical simulation with a solar load model was performed using ANSYS-FLUENT Academic 2019 R3 to study the temperature distribution and solar heat flux inside the cooker. The solar beam direction and radiation were considered via the solar load model using two methods: by defining the experimental data as the input and by using ANSYS-FLUENT's solar calculator. The simulation results were validated by comparison with experimental results in the form of temperature measurements, and good agreement was observed between the numerical and experimental results with a maximum error of 3.29%.