Imagine you were stranded on a desert island and after you have done your inventory on all of your supplies, you start building yourself a shelter and gather together some food to eat, but you notice you have no matches. The sun is beating down on you and your stomach is growling like crazy, you keep asking yourself, how can I cook this food? Your brain finally starts thinking of past tips you’ve heard about surviving on a desert island, so you look around and in your possession you have some string, some tin foil, newspaper, saran wrap, and a pencil. You remember hearing about how the sun’s heat can be harnessed to heat and cook your food. Eureka: solar cooking! Although one might think that solar cooking is a far fetched idea, the green movement has made solar cooking an actual energy alternative. In this research paper we will look at how this medium solar energy is used in solar cooking, and the many benefits.
Solar energy has been around since the 1700s, it has recently made a strong comeback with the hunt for new energy sources instead of crude oil and gasoline, which we use to heat our houses, our stoves, and to run our cars. Since crude oil and gasoline have become less economical due to the recent wars which have caused skyrocketing prices, the green movement has made a strong comeback.
Thank goodness for scientists like Horace De Saussure. Horace De Saussure was the first person to build a small device intended to harness the energy of sunlight, he used a contraption know as a solar oven. Saussure was focused on the heat-trapping capacity of glass. Saussure created the earliest know solar oven. He put five glass boxes one inside the other, and rested them on a black slab of wood. After several hours out in the s...
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...ily day, while your food remains nice and toasty, waiting for you. Solar Ovens can cook almost anything, from a whole turkey to some morning bacon.
Solar cooking requires sunlight, which makes this process difficult during winter months and rainy days. Cooking may take a significantly longer time as compared to kitchen stoves. Small solar cookers may cost from $5-$20, but a more sophisticated one may cost up to $150. This may be hard for people in developing countries, because they may only get paid a little amount of money. Someone who is using the solar oven must make a time frame of when they can maximize the use of sunlight, because of this disadvantage, preparation for cooking must start early in the morning so that the food can be placed in the cooker by noon. The solar oven’s efficiency can be reduced drastically, just by factors such as rain, wind, or snow.
A Passive solar system collects heat as the sun shines through the windows and is stored on thermal mass. It uses the sun’s energy for heating or cooling buildings. Future homes should be constructed with this system because its advantages outweigh its drawbacks with low emissions of CO2 or other pollutant, consists of little maintenance, and has positive long term effects such as low electric bills.
Three types of heat transfers help solar cookers use the sun’s energy to cook food. Heat is always transferred from the warmer object to the cooler object. Heat is also transferred to and through some materials better than others. The three types of heat transfers are radiation, conduction, and convection. Convection is the heat transfer by movement through materials such as air or a liquid. Materials like these are called mediums. Convection is the primary way heat can be transferred through liquids and gases. To classify a heat transfer as convection, hot air has to rise up to equally heat the air around it. Box solar cookers have to retain this hot air to cook food, so the cookers have to have lids with a transparent covering. The transparent covering shuts in all of the hot air and keeps out the cool air. The second heat transfer is the transfer of heat between two objects, or substances, that are directly in contact with each other. This heat transfer, called conduction is the primary way heat can be transferred through solids. In gases and liquids, conduction works poorly because the atoms have a great deal of space between them. Since they have a lot of space between each other, they can’t communicate heat to one another. The solid, aluminum foil, is commonly used in homemade solar ovens because it is a metal. It is well known metal is a great conductor of heat. Since metal (aluminum) is a great conductor of heat, whatever comes in contact with it will gradually absorb the heat from the metal. The third type of heat transfer is radiation. Radiation is the transfer of energy (heat) through space by electromagnetic waves. Solar energy reaches Earth by radiation (Pearson 485). When an energy wave comes directly in contact with...
The sun has been a major aspect of life since the beginning of time. People used many other forms of energy before electricity was discovered. There has been a debate over energy resources for years. Many people are worried about what current energy resources may be doing to the environment. Oil spills and nuclear power plant mishaps have only been a few accidents that have had a big impact on the environment and the people who inhabit it. There are plenty of energy sources that do not harm the environment and are still able to get the job done. Solar energy is one energy alternative that will insure the betterment of the country and, at the same time, protect the natural environment.
more and more companies are starting to use them. I believe that solar energy is better for our
sun using a solar panel like contraption. The base temperature can be controlled by opening and
These lamps cost a lot of money to operate each day and produce poor quality of light. In 2011, One Acre Fund began a series of studies (including two RCTs) to evaluate the household impact of selling solar lamps to farmers. In each study, farmers signed up to buy our lamps, and we randomly selected a control group from those farmers who would be delayed in receiving the light. We then tracked the household energy expenditures daily for the test group and the comparison group. There were striking differences and clear energy cost savings for the solar light owners, as well as a significant increase in child study hours due to higher-quality light.
The future of the United States solar energy industry will be shaped not only by economic growth, but also by the rate of declining oil resources and the global realization of the consequences of human induced climate change. Political responses to this realization in the United States include; new policies, legislature, and tax incentives to both businesses and private households to promote growth and investment in the solar power industry.
Preview: Today I will discuss the potential that solar power has to become this country’s main supply of energy and the latest research that can make solar power more efficient and cost effective. I will also present the environmental benefits that come with using solar power over other and more harmful forms of energy.
Solar thermal energy is dead! A solar thermal heating system can cost upwards of $7,000 to install and it most likely won't even save you too much money. This is why many people debate over whether they should use a solar thermal water heating system, because they think they are saving money, or an inexpensive traditional water heating system. A traditional heating system is a system that is powered off of electricity, gas, oil or some other fuel. A solar thermal heating system uses the energy from the sun, hence “solar”, and it turns that energy into hot water to either heat a home or to provide domestic hot water. The energy from the sun is captured by energy collectors, also known as solar panels. The water is heated inside the panels and then distributed throughout the home for use or stored in a tank for later use. The ideas behind this sound great, but in reality that is not the case.Solar thermal energy is not the best choice for home heating a home or hot water heating.
Solar is a viable alternative energy source with solar panels becoming more affordable and more efficiently designed.
Solar water heaters work by using energy from the sun. There are two types of systems for solar water heaters, an open system and a closed system (“Tapping into the Sun”). These systems depend on the type of climates they are installed in (“Tapping into the Sun”). Open systems are worth the installation if the weather is year round sunny, closed systems are better if the weather gets cold. The water cannot be run during winter so the system will be switched to fuel and in the summertime when it is warm, so the sy...
I am certain that all have heard of the terms greenhouse gases, fossil fuels, and global warming. Have you ever questioned what will happen if nothing is done about the environmental problems facing the world today? What if I answer you that, we can merely use the power from the sun to power up our entire planet without the use of harmful energy sources, which affect our atmosphere? The power from the sun is what we call solar power. Solar power is the energy that comes from the sun as light and heat energy, and then it is later converted into electrical energy through solar panels (Nelson, 2008).
...ct solar radiation onto a single point above the mirror. The parabolic dish receiver is ran by a computer and uses a dual-axis system for tracking the sun. A Stirling engine is used for some of these systems to generate electricity. With these receiver focal points, temperatures can reach higher than 100°C. At this temperature, energy created is efficient.
One of the most compelling arguments for the use of renewable energy is how many forms exist of it. Nuclear power, solar power, wind power, tidal power, hydroelectric power, pumped storage, wave power, geothermal power, biomass, and biogas are the most widely known renewable energy sources (Darvill, 2013). This large selection of fuels supports the idea of renewable fuels one day powering the entire planet. All the sources of energy have different niches and benefits. Solar energy is extremely ef...
Regarding solar power, Mistry claims that although the solar power does not generate pollution, it has a lot of costs. Building solar panels with photovoltaic equipment has high costs. For instance, a photovoltaic system for a home can cost around $35,000 (Kumar, 2012). However, if our goal for the future is to create a healthy environment, switching fossil fuels for solar power might be the best choice to achieve that goal. According to Kumar (2012), Solar power is a clean and renewable energy so, it decreases the dependency on fossil fuel and also reduces the air pollution.