Performance Evaluation of Radiant Heating Based Solar Cooker Integrated with Organic PCM

Solar cooker (SC) is one of the applications of renewable energy technologies which is enabling food to be cooked using solar radiation. However, one of the limitations of convectional solar cookers is their inability to perform effectively during periods of low or decreasing solar radiation. To overcome this limitation, integration of “Thermal energy storage system” with or within the solar cooker can be a proposed method to store incident solar energy during high solar radiation periods and get back the energy during the period of decreasing solar radiation so as to extend the duration of working time of solar cookers uniformly. In the present work, “Radiant heating-based solar cooker” (RHSC) integrated with paraffin wax (PW) used as a phase change material (PCM) was employed and tested under the climatic condition (summer) of Prayagraj (latitude 25° 27' N and longitude 81° 44'), Uttar Pradesh, India. The experiments on the RHSC with and without PCM during April-May, 2025 were conducted under the loading conditions (pots containing water) and data recorded between 07:00 and 21:00 h. The equal amount of water was taken in the cooking pots to ensure uniformity during the performance analysis. The experimental performances of RHSC with and without PCM show better performance as compared to “Standard box type solar cooker” (SBSC) and others Box type SC integrated with PW.