Sun
Solar furnaces
04/20/2011
A few bits of cardboard, some aluminum foil and a little mental math to assemble them – anyone can build a solar furnace ready to cook! This tried and tested technique is simple and available to all.
So easy a child could do it
The idea is simple: use the free energy of the sun to cook. And it is almost as easy to put into practice. There are various types of cookers, including solar box cookers, solar panel cookers, parabolic solar cookers, each with specific advantages but all equally easy to build. No need to be an engineer, most of the time all you need is a bit of cardboard, scissors and some aluminum foil to get started. It is its simplicity which makes this technique available to all. So, for example a pizza box can be transformed into a cooker and a car windshield shade can be used to make a parabolic cooker.
However, this type of cooking takes time: while cooking time depends on the equipment used (longer for a box cooker than for a parabolic cooker), the light available and the amount of food to be cooked, you need plenty of time to cook this way. The main advantage of this technique is, of course, cost, because it uses a free and abundant energy source. These DIY cookers are far from being gadgets.
Accessing energy and training people to build them themselves from locally sourced materials.
Real usefulness
NGOs are seeking to encourage this cooking method to allow people who do not currently have access to energy to cook more cheaply. In refugee camps in Kenya and Chad, in schools in Rwanda, in villages in Burkina Faso and India, and among the Andean populations of Peru and Bolivia, trainers are teaching people how to build solar cookers using recovered materials or simple cardboard kits. The association Bolivia Inti has distributed over 11,600 cookers and organizes training workshops to show locals how to build their own cookers using locally sourced materials.
