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Solar Cooking and Food Drying and Solar Stills and Root Cellars

Solar food cookers use an arrangement of reflectors to concentrate solar energy on a cooking vessel. A number of innovative designs have been developed. Many of the solar cooker designs are inexpensive and easy to build.

This page also covers solar food dryers, solar stills to purify water, and root cellars for storing food.

Solar cookers, solar oven and solar food dryer -- all described below

Directory for this Page:

Solar Cooking
Food Drying
Solar Stills
Root Cellar

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Solar Cooking
Solar Cooking http://www.solarcooking.org/	Lots of info on solar cookers, solar cooking and solar food dryers. Plans for solar cookers and food dryers.
Compendium of Solar Cooker Designs http://solarcooking.wikia.com/ ...	This site provides information on many solar cooker designs spanning a large range of design types, sizes, and capability. You can even add your own comments on cookers.
Cooking With the Sun: How to Build and Use Solar Cookers Beth Halacy www.home.ix.netcom.com/~jdhowell/	Nice book on solar cooking -- title pretty well describes it -- has plans and recipes. Useful information and pictures on the website.
Parvati Solar Cooker www.angelfire.com/80s/shobhapardeshi/index.html	A very nice site describing the Parvati solar cooker. Provides good assembly diagrams and pictures. The cooker is pictured at the top of this page on the left.
Solar Cooking -- and the Livin' I Easy Jennifer Stein Barker How to get articles from Home Power ...	Home Power article, issue 88 Good review of various types of solar cookers, cooking techniques, and solar cooking recopies (including a Chocolate-Mint Ricotta Mousse!).
Roasting Coffee on Sunshine How to get articles from Home Power ....	Issue 105 Home Power Magazine How to build a 1200F solar coffee bean roaster.
Home Power Magazine Solar Cooker Contest Richard Perez How to get articles from Home Power ...	Home Power Magazine article, issue 43. Report on the Home Power Solar Cooker Contest. Interesting solar cooker designs, and full plans for the winning cooker.
Tracking Solar Cooker C. Alan Nichols http://solarcooking.org/plans/Cookerbo.pdf	Very detailed plans, design, and test data for a solar cooker that tracks the sun.
Scheffler Concentrators -- Large, Concentrating Cooking Collector with Storage Barli Development Institute http://www.barli.org/solar-storage.html Another Version in Nepal http://spot.fho-emden.de/hp/weiler/itahari.html Good description of Scheffler Reflector Design: http://www.solare-bruecke.org/ ... David Delaney article on the Scheffler heliostat cooker design http://www.geocities.com	An impressively large concentrating community Solar Cooker. These Scheffler heliostats concentrate the sun onto a fixed cooking vessel, or onto a heat storage device that provides for cooking after sunset. This type of concentrator can be built with common materials and ordinary skills. The daily tracking can be by a simple clockwork mechanism, and seasonal tracking can be manual.
Solar Fire Project http://www.solarfireproject.com/	Solar Fire provides detailed plans and how-to instructions for building three different sizes of concentrating solar collectors. The materials are easily obtainable and the design is simple and straight forward -- the concentrators can be made with readily available materials and simple tools. The Helios collector provides about 3 KW output and temperatures up to 950C. Several potential applications are discussed.
Constructing a Solar Cooker From an Abandoned Satellite Dish http://www.backyardnature.net/j/solardsh.htm and another one: http://www.alternativeengineering.com and, it it doesn't work as a cooker, you can try this: http://www.mountlehmanllamas.com/feeder-sat-dish.html	Using an old sattelite dish as a solar cooker. Be careful!
SunSpot.org http://www.sunspot.org.uk/index.htm	An interesting site with some interesting solar stove designs.
Parabolic Solar Cookers, By Jennifer From CCAT (Campus Center for Appropriate Technology) http://www.humboldt.edu	Good paper on parabolic solar cookers with quite a bit of design information. The CCAT site has a number of interesting solar projects: www.humboldt.edu/%7Eccat/index.html
Bill's Solar Cooking Page www.williamgbecker.com/SolarCooking.html Bill's new solar oven design 7/27/07: www.williamgbecker.com/MakeSolarOven.html	Bill's solar cooking page. Great solar cooking plans, tips, and recipes. Bills new solar oven -------->> Full Details...
Cooking With the Sun http://www.cookwiththesun.com/	Another good solar cooking site with some plans and hints and lots of recipes. (Thanks to Doug for recommending this site)
Villager sun Oven Article in TreeHugger www.treehugger.com	A large solar oven - "Each VILLAGER SUN OVEN® when utilized as a Sun Bakery can save over 150 tons of wood annually which results in the reduction of 277 tons of CO2 green house gas emissions annually."
Solar Funnel Cooker as Cooler http://solarcooking.org/plans/funnel.htm	This article provides very complete instructions on how to make and use the solar funnel cooker. It also describes how to use it to cool or refrigerate materials via radiation to the sky at night.
Solar Wall Oven http://solarcooking.org/bkerr/DoItYouself.htm http://www.solarcooking.org/wallovn1.htm	Very detailed article on designing, constructing, and the pros and cons of a solar oven mounted to an exterior wall with access from the inside.
Parabola Drawing Tool http://home.germany.net ...	An easy to make tool for drawing parabolas as used in concentrating collectors.
The Ultimate Solar Cooker http://www.inhabitat.com/ ... How it works: http://www.solare-bruecke.org ...	Solar cooking on a large scale. 84 parabolic concentrators of 9.2 sq meters each. Capable of cooking 20 to 40 thousand meals a day! This type of concentrator can be built with common materials and ordinary skills.
Solar Food Drying
Indirect, Through-Pass, Solar Food Dryer Dennis Scanlin How to get articles from Home Power ...	Home Power Magazine article, issue 57 Very good article on solar food drying. Plans for food dryer. Quite a bit of data on how to optimize the drying process.
Maine Solar Primer Herb and Food Dryer Maine Solar Energy Association	Plan for a simple herb and food dryer Courtesy of the Maine Solar Energy Association
Improving Solar Food Dryers Dennsi Scanlin, Marcus Renner, David Domeruth, Heat Moody - Appalachian State University How to get articles from Home Power ...	Home Power Magazine article, issue 69 Very good article from Appalachian State University on finding an optimal design for a solar food dryer. Various absorbers, reflectors, glazing arrangements etc. were tested to find what works best.
HP57 The Design, Construction and use of an Indirect, Through-Pass, Solar Food Dryer Dennis Scanlin How to get articles from Home Power ...	Home Power Magazine article, issue 57 A highly refined design, plans and operating data for a solar food dryer by Appalachian State University. Try the first link first, if not there, search the archieves.
GeoPathfinder Solar Food Dryer http://www.geopathfinder.com	What appears to be a very efficient and simple design for a solar food dryer. Lots of other interesting sustainable living projects on this website.
Solar Tunnel Food Dryer, Allen Dong, I-Tech Public Domain http://www.efn.org/~itech/ ...	An easy to build solar tunnel style food dryer. A detailed discussion on how to set the dryer up for optimum performance Lots of solar dryer design information on solar food dryers. This is from the I Tech site, which offers several other public domain projects.
Test of A Solar Crop Dryer Danish Technological Institute Energy division www.risoe.dk/solenergi/rapporter/sec-r-6.htm	Test of solar crop dryer. Extensive data collected on optimizing drying process. Details on how dryer is constructed.
Solar Dryer for Fruits and Vegtables Clemson University Cooperative Extension Service Solar Food Dryer (160K pdf)	Simple solar food dryer plans.
J R Whipple solar dehydrator www.jrwhipple.com/sr/soldehydrate.html	"Made from two cardboard boxes, some clear plastic wrap, and a little tape. You can build a nearly free solar dehydrator. Set it on a stool or chair and face it's solar collector towards the sun, and you have a functional food preservation machine for little work and even less money."
Solar Stills
UNDERSTANDING SOLAR STILLS Horace McCracken and Joel Gordes VITA Paper	Very complete VITA paper describing a wide variety of solar stills for making potable water. A good deal of design and construction information.
Watercone Solar Still http://www.watercone.com/product.html	A slick new design for solar still. "This Invention represents a conical, self-supporting and stackable Unit made from transparent, thermo-formable polycarbonate (same as water dispensers) outfitted with a screw cap spout at the tip and an inward circular collecting trough at the base. Technically speaking it is a solar still. "
Solar Still ElPaso Solar Energy Association http://www.txses.org/epsea/stills.html	Plans for a solar still used to purify water. Report on daily output.
Root Cellar for storing perishable food
Root Cellar for Vegetable Storage Canada Plan Service Root Cellar Plan 6321 (pdf) Root Cellar Info 6321 (pdf)	Root cellar for vegetable storage.
More Root Cellar Stuff Walton Feed, Inc http://waltonfeed.com/old/cellars.html	An interesting collection of information on root cellars, including the "Granddaddy" of all root cellars (picture).
Fridge-Less Living Mother Earth News www.motherearthnews.com	Lots of information on how to get along without a fridge, including a root cellar in basement, conventional root cellars, and spring water refrigeration.
Passive Refrigerator/Icebox http://fourmileisland.com/IceBox.htm	This frig uses a well insulated 300 gallon water/ice container that is cooled by an outdoor finned tube baseboard unit to supply year round refrigeration with no energy use. No moving parts. Other interesting projects on the same site.