Solar Thermal Cooking Device for Domestic Cooking Applications: Bridging Sustainable Development Goals and Innovation

Fossil fuels are vital in the cooking field rather than the automotive sector. Hence, solar cooking has been popularized in recent years due to the rising cost of cooking gas. However, implementing successful renewable energy for cooking in urban area is still challenging for industries. Hence, a solar thermic cooking device with a compact size suited for domestic cooking in urban area is proposed. Thus, the solar cooking device will be developed as a fully functional prototype with necessary supporting modules, depending on the heat transfer fluid (HTF) flow and heat transfer rate between fluids. The main objective is to represent various computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and thermal analysis results on different optimistic designs for a solar thermoelectric cooking device's heat exchanger and storage unit. The 3D part model of the modules has been developed using SOLIDWORKS 2019 software. CFD has also been carried out using the same workspace with an additional package called flow simulation to analyze the flow properties of heat transfer fluid at different rates when circulated in other modules. Moreover, the thermal behavior of the HTF concerning the heat transition between module surfaces is simulated using SOLIDWORKS flow simulation to evaluate the heat storage capacity and rate of heat transfer. The theoretical formulations for the modules are derived through thermodynamic equations concerning the materials and fluid involved in the unit. The thermal and CFD analysis is carried out for different optimistic 3D models based on thermal sustainability, and the results are compared with theoretical analysis, which is discussed in this paper.