Sunday, July 24, 2011

Success! Progress and moving forward

Ok. It's been a little while since I progressed on my solar cooker- the fryer. I'm updating with what is current.

The aluminium foil just would not work for me. I decided to scrap it, pull it off and clean the dish. This took some doing as glue isn't known for letting go. But I got a lot off.

My 2nd attempt was with a high gloss silver spray paint. While the application was easy, I could never generate much heat from it.

I kept looking around town for 'reflective tape', but everyone kept pointing me to the tap used on mailboxes and so on. This wasn't what I was looking for. I considered finding some broken mirrors and gluing the pieces to the dish. While this sounded cool, I decided not to do it this time. My first goal is to have a fully functional solar fryer and I knew I had a long way to go.

One day as I sat thinking about the mirror and the reflector tape, I mumbled that I wanted the tape to act as a mirror. Mirror tape. So I put that into google and hit enter. Lo and behold, I found it. I found it here at identi-tape.

One of my goals was to use local and easy to get items, but I wasn't getting far doing that. I really like the idea of using broken mirror pieces to create a sort of mosaic to achieve this down the line, but for this go around, I chose this mirror tape.

So I received it. I proceeded to put it on the dish.


As you can see, the foil and paint still show, but they are nothing compared to the tape. I continued to put it on.


As I went I learned that if I were to do it again, I would start with the center and move out. This would save some overlapping of the tape.


I had purchased a 3 way clamp with the silver spray paint and had painted it black (using ... black spray paint). I was never sure if it would hold the heat, but I liked the idea of it holding the pot or pan on top.

I put it out into the sun to 'fire it up' and try to boil some water.


I put a thermometer in the water to measure the heat.



I stood back and watched the heat rise.

It slowly rose to about 155 degrees. But it wouldn't budge much higher. Why? Well ...



The wind was blowing and it helped blow high clouds over head. Before long there was too little sun to produce heat. I was frustrated as I felt I was on the verge of success. I abandoned the project until the sun came out.

A few hours later it was blazing. No clouds. I went out and started it up again.


It quickly rose up to 160 and held at 165. Now if you look carefully at the picture above, you'll see the bright light under the pan hitting the piece of wood I use. As I tilted the dish down a little, the wood began to smoke -a lot-. I tilted it back and decided to try cooking with this.

I chose a single egg as my first attempted meal made with the solar cooker. I used the water to water a small chili plant I hope is going to grow and then dropped in some butter and the egg after the butter melted.



I had quiet hopes that it would cook quickly. I broke the yoke and stirred it a bit.


After several minutes, it began to cook! It was slow and a bit frustrating. And exciting. I had a mesh of feelings inside of me stirring at once. Slowly, over the course of 10 minutes,


it began to cook


And it did. I finally removed it from the pot, placed the solar oven in the shade and took it inside. I shared my single egg and enjoyed it completely.

I need to seriously modify this before I can call it good. I need a more solid base (the wood isn't level as it is boughed). I need to figure out a way to have the pan placed up above the dish, and be able to adjust its length as well as adjust the level for the pan (or pot). I do believe the clamp is not helping at all. I may opt for a method to suspend the cooking dish so it gets the direct sunlight.

So I've a ways to go. But you can see I am getting there. I am excited and hopeful that this will become exactly what I envisioned- an almost daily option to cook my meals without any other power than the sun.

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