Review on solar cooker systems: Economic and environmental study for different Lebanese scenarios

In this work, a review on solar cookers is presented. This review includes principle and classification, parameters influencing the performance of a solar cooker, and energy and exergy analysis related to solar cooker systems. Moreover, an economic study is performed for different scenarios in Lebanon (home, hotel, restaurant and snack) and for several categories of solar cookers (solar box cooker, solar panel cooker, parabolic solar cooker and evacuated tube solar cooker with thermal storage). The main idea of the economic study is to estimate the payback period in function of percentage of time Pr where solar cooker is utilized, for each solar cooker and in each scenario. It was obtained that the higher dependence on solar cooker decreases payback period. Besides, environmental analysis is implemented to compute the amount of reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in the different scenarios as percentage of time where solar cooker is used varies. It was shown that the reduction in amount of carbon dioxide raised from 6.05 to 60.55 kg/month, 605.52 to 6055.2 kg/month, 399.64 to 3996.43 kg/month and from 90.82 to 908.28 kg/month in home, restaurant, hotel and snack respectively when Pr increased from 0.1 to 1. Hence, utilizing a solar cooker diminishes carbon dioxide emissions in all scenarios where Pr has direct relationship with minimization of carbon dioxide emissions.