ESW at Cornell Solar Cooker Team - Fall 2014
The Solar Cooker team designs, builds, and tests solar cookers, solar dryers, water distillers and pasteurizers and other solar powered systems. Our mission is to improve and optimize alternative energy solutions to cooking and other household needs in cooperation with Grupo Fenix, an organization at the Universidad Nacional de Ingeneria in Managua, Nicaragua, and Las Mujeres Solares de Totogalpa, a women's collective in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua. Grupo Fenix works in Nicaragua to develop, implement and publicize renewable, sustainable solutions to energy needs. Las Mujeres Solares de Totogalpa has worked with Grupo Fenix building and using solar cookers, dryers, water distillers, biogas generators, charcoal production and charcoal stoves. They have a Solar Restaurant, in which the food is prepared with solar cookers and other alternative energy cooking methods, including use of electricity from photovoltaic solar arrays and gas from bio-digested manure. Sabana Grande is in a region suffering from deforestation and concomitant erosion of topsoil and the loss of water retention. The use of Solar Ovens reduces the need for women to spend hours of their day gathering wood for cooking fuel and helps reduce the health risks from fires used for cooking and the smoke from open fires in the cooking areas, frequently within the house. The Solar Cooker Team works to evolve the cooker design in use in Nicaragua and increase the use of Solar Ovens. New designs are careful to use materials and technologies available to our cooperators in Nicaragua. The team visited Las Mujeres... and Grupo Fenix this spring in Sabana Grande during spring break. Here is a short teaser for a video about Las Mujeres that resulted from our Spring 2012 trip.
Click the link for more information on our 2013 Nicaragua Trip.
Current Research Projects:
- Thermal Concentrator using Fresnel lens to focus sunlight for high heat.
- Develop and test testing procedures similar to ASAE S580: Testing and Reporting Solar Cooker Performance.
- Build and document a solar water distiller.
- Design and build a parabolic trough water pasteurizer/distiller.
- Design and build a dual axis solar tracker.
- Design and build a solar autoclave.
- Design and build an adobe block making mechanism.
Team Members A list of current and past members of the Solar Ovens team
Click the link for more information on our 2012 Nicaragua Trip. here for the 2011 Nicaragua Trip. Here are pictures from the trip.
The work on the SolarCooker wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.