Cooking with photo voltaic ovens in sub-Saharan Africa – TechnoNews

Though sub-Saharan areas could seem good for photo voltaic ovens, many individuals use wooden or coal as the principle supply of vitality for cooking, particularly in areas that aren’t related to the facility grid.

This will trigger well being challenges associated to smoke and soot from indoor cooking. A brand new research carried out at KTH Royal Institute of Expertise in Stockholm reveals that as many as half one million lives may very well be saved every year by changing wooden and coal for cooking.

As a part of a sequence of Norad packages, NTNU professor Ole Jørgen Nydal has been engaged on creating varied technological options to the issue with a gaggle of African universities.

“If you walk around the streets in Uganda, for example, and ask why there are no small solar panels installed on the surrounding houses, they say it is because the batteries stop working after a few years, and that they are expensive. Without storage solutions, creating solar and wind energy for cooking is very difficult,” says Nydal, who works on the Division of Power and Course of Engineering.

Nydal has been on the forefront of a long-standing NTNU collaboration with universities in Uganda and Tanzania on creating the usage of photo voltaic vitality for cooking.

Along with the well being advantages of those alternate options, many African nations wish to change fossil fuels with renewable sources of vitality.

Photo voltaic cookers haven’t taken off

Just lately, Nydal has written a abstract and evaluation of the assorted ideas which were tried in an article printed within the Energies journal. He factors out that cooking with photo voltaic vitality has a protracted historical past and entails many options—from can cookers to photo voltaic concentrators.

Nevertheless, these options have by no means actually taken off. The explanations behind this are many, however one main problem is that some options require entry to photo voltaic vitality precisely once you want it.

“One solution to address that problem is to use a form of heat storage, a heat battery, which you charge up with solar energy during the day and cook with in the evening,” Nydal mentioned. He particularly highlights warmth storage together with photo voltaic panels.

Photo voltaic panels + warmth storage = good answer?

Nydal and his mission companions have examined quite a lot of warmth storage ideas. The necessities for all are that they have to be capable to present warmth of as much as roughly 220 levels Celsius, be nicely insulated in order that they keep away from warmth loss, and should be capable to emit warmth when the solar is not shining.

The researchers have checked out methods by which the heat-retaining materials is both vegetable oil, rock beds, or photo voltaic salt.

A distinction is drawn between methods the place the solar is used instantly for heating and not directly through photo voltaic panels.

“The conclusion from our experience is that although the energy efficiency of direct systems may be better than solar panel systems, solar panel systems have the advantage of being simple, robust and can also harvest energy from diffuse sunlight,” says Nydal.

Many components have been assessed. For instance, are the methods clear and innocent to function inside individuals’s houses? Can they be produced and maintained domestically? Are they strong or have they got many transferring elements that may break? Is the warmth transferred to the meals shortly sufficient? In his article, Nydal writes that some methods show to be greatest fitted to frying meals, whereas others are higher fitted to oven baking.

Testing in Uganda

Nydal says that there’s additionally plenty of exercise among the many African companions in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and most lately Malawi and South Sudan. Universities in South Africa and Namibia are additionally exhibiting plenty of curiosity.

Jimmy Chaciga is a Ph.D. pupil at Makerere College in Uganda and lately printed an article on photo voltaic cookers within the Journal of Power Storage. Chaciga studied an idea in a laboratory at NTNU after which went to Makerere to construct it. It’s a small-scale photo voltaic cooker with a tank holding 18 liters of sunflower oil mixed with a heating aspect and three photo voltaic panels. Its vitality effectivity was very promising.

“We have been testing many possible concepts for a long time now, but the biggest challenge in the future is implementation. Experience tells us that it is not that easy to do from universities. You have to leave the university setting and engage with others who can produce, test and follow up the systems,” says Nydal.

This has not stopped researchers and college students from testing new ideas akin to changing wind vitality instantly into warmth storage.

“Sun and wind conditions change all the time, so a combination of both wind and solar energy is a good idea,” says Nydal. There’s a clear want for brand spanking new vitality options for cooking, and our purpose has been for the schools within the accomplice nations to take an lively position on this growth.

Photo voltaic ovens spark curiosity

The photo voltaic oven analysis at NTNU has engaged and fascinated many individuals for a very long time.

When the totally different ideas have been examined within the weak Trondheim solar at NTNU, many individuals have stopped to take footage.

College students have traveled to Tanzania, for instance, in collaboration with Engineers With out Borders as a part of their grasp’s mission. As well as, a gaggle of entrepreneurial college students have created a photo voltaic grill to check the same answer in a European setting.

And a few of Nydal’s photo voltaic oven analysis has ended up on the Norwegian Museum of Science and Expertise in Oslo.

Exhibited on the Norwegian Museum of Science and Expertise

“It is a bit strange having something exhibited at a museum before it has even been put into use,” says Professor Ole Jørgen Nydal.

The everlasting vitality exhibition on the Norwegian Museum of Science and Expertise in Oslo showcases the historical past of Norwegian vitality. The exhibition supplies an summary of Norwegian vitality that begins with steam energy and hydropower, and results in present vitality sources akin to photo voltaic and hydrogen energy.

And in a show case devoted to photo voltaic vitality, positioned subsequent to early examples of Norwegian photo voltaic panels and extra fashionable photo voltaic know-how, there’s a prototype from NTNU in Trondheim that was developed in Nydal’s photo voltaic oven mission.

“It is great that heat batteries are being displayed in a place where energy problems and renewable energy are showcased. The challenge now is to make the heat storage technology work for frying, boiling and baking,” says Nydal.