Decision Support System of a Solar Powered Baking Oven

Abstract

Abstract

The use of fossil fuel, wood and charcoal in the traditional cooking and baking processes can present serious challenges to the health of the environment, and promote land degradation. Similarly, the present 21^st century energy crisis in Nigeria and the entire globe, has suggested that solar energy is currently the cheapest and cleanest form of energy for diverse applications, through appropriately developed devices. This study therefore, designed a device for bread baking and other confectionary operations, using a decision support system (DSS) which minimizes the drudgery of under-designing or over-designing, thus making the design flexible and for meeting specific bread production targets. This device, which utilizes solar energy for bread baking is termed solar baking oven. It consists of a focusing collector (parabolic concentrator) and a flat plate collector termed the oven chamber or absorber unit. The following collector obtains direct radiation from the sun over a wide range of an area and converges it to its focal point where the oven chamber is positioned to receive both concentrated, and diffuse radiation from the sun. The oven chamber is a double-walled enclosure constructed from  thick stainless-steel plates. The external wall measuring  is separated from the inner wall by a  thick fiberglass insulation serving as lagging material. It is designed to raise low-level radiation to high-level radiation of the flat plate collector, while the flat plate collector collects, absorbs both diffuse and direct radiation (short-wave radiation) from the sun, and since the plain glasses are opaque to long-wave radiation, it traps and stores the heat energy from the sun. it is the heart of the device; hence it is integrated with the oven compartment. The solar baking oven consists of two reflectors made from plane mirrors which reflect the Sun’s rays to the absorber plate placed in the baking chamber. The two reflectors (plain mirrors) intensify the incoming solar radiation into the baking chamber and increase the oven's thermal properties and efficiency, when the oven temperature is raised to and above, the dough is introduced into the oven chamber and heated for about  depending on the shelf-life of the intended bread produced. The DSS has shown its capability of assisting solar oven designers by minimizing drudgery of over and under-design, material selection, and time wastage on long-hand calculation, in which design calculation can be gotten in few seconds. Since, the differences in the comparative results is negligible, and the solar oven poses no risk to environmental health, hence, it does not contribute to the greenhouse gases. Its recommendations for further optimization are also extensively discussed.