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Solar Bowl and similar collective solar cooking systems

This sun bowl in Auroville, India, is probably the best known and most referenced sun bowl in the world. Conceptually, it works to initially collect sunlight through a large concave spherical mirror and then focus the sun’s rays onto a cauldron of water.

Essentially the design is that of a huge 15m diameter spherical dish (which is similar but not exactly the same as a parabolic reflector) placed on the ground. Incoming sunlight is captured and concentrated upwards. At the focal point of the reflection is a cylindrical cauldron. The boiler is designed to automatically follow the position of the sun, thus optimizing the reflection of concentrated sunlight and the consequent heat (a temperature of more than 300 °C can be generated), thus heating the water internally and subsequently inducing production steam .

This steam then powers the cooking process in the kitchen, achieving more than 2,000 meals a day. In essence, the bowl serves as a solar concentrator to collect solar energy from the sun. A detailed technical explanation accompanied by descriptive diagrams and photographs is available online.

Deepak Gadhia has developed what is claimed to be the world’s largest solar cooking system at Mt. Abu in Rajasthan in India. Solar energy is also collected here and used on an industrial scale for cooking, where more than 30,000 meals are prepared and cooked every day. This solar collection concept is slightly different in that, unlike a large concentrator, numerous parabolic reflectors are collectively used as a solar cooker. Here the collective parabolic principle is applied whereby Scheffler’s parabolic reflectors are used collectively to focus sunlight onto a receiver to produce heat and steam for mass cooking.

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