Paraboloid Solar Concentrator

In this setup two test for a paraboloid concentrating type solar cooker are purposed. The first test is water heating test under clear sunshine. The second test, a water-cooling test under the absence of sun light, provides the overall heat loss factor. The result of the first test can be then analyzed to obtain the optical efficiency factor.

Solar thermal energy storage for process heating

Flat plate collector is widely used in agriculture product drying. While the collector serves as the conversion device for solar radiation to heat, storage is essential to provide flexibility in utilization of this heat as per demand. This setup used Phase Change Materials (PCM) integrated flat plate collector for such hot air delivery for solar drying of fresh produce in the evening/night. A commercially available fatty acid has been used as storage material in single-glaze collector-storage system. The system contains about 70 kg of material with a total storage capacity of 18 MJ.

Solar cooker

Solar cooker experiments allows students to do experiments on water heating with cooker with or without any low-concentration. The experiment helps students to calculate F1 and F2 of cooker.