Optical ray-tracing analysis of geometrical variations of a funnel solar cooker.

Abstract

Funnel solar cookers are simple, effective and have multiple advantages in practical use. The typology is wide but a large part of the existing designs are based on a 3D funnel-shaped concentrator assembled from a series of flat reflective panels. The optical performance of a funnel cooker design of this category has already been studied in a previous work. However, there are some interesting geometric aspects that have never been investigated before. The typical funnel geometry has two degrees of freedom to define its shape. This generates a family of variations from the base geometry. The influence of these variations on the cooker optical performance is unknown. This work uses the open source Soltrace ray-tracing tool to improve the understandig of these aspects. This knowledge may be of interest to designers and also to practical users of the funnel solar cooker.