Cheaper, healthier cooking option demonstrated
BHOPAL: With a bamboo basket, aluminum foil and a vessel and using the sun as fuel, Sarika Gharu has not just created solar cooker but also served meal to over 20 people to test the quality one can get using only natural resources.
Sarika, in her demo ‘Suryaj’, used baskets made of bamboo and foiled them from inside and used vessels painted black from the outside for vegetables. In these solar cookers, it took just 50 minutes for the food to be ready. The science behind this is the use of aluminum foil, which concentrates the rays of the sun in the centre of the basket and ultimately the whole vessel and since black absorbs heat, the food is cooked easily when the right heat is generated.
With just Rs110, the bamboo solar cooker can cook as efficiently as solar cookers available in the market which cost about Rs 7,000. Sarika said, “The abundance of sunlight can be used to the benefit and save cooking gas. We get sunlight for over 200 days of a year and presently from 8am to 4 pm we get sunlight in excess. Thus there is a need to develop ways to utilise this energy. With this solar cooker, 150 centigrade temperature can be produced. This also saves 30 per cent LPG cylinder and also the food cooked is healthy due to the low heat of cooking,” she said. Eight students Ashi, Sadhna, Narendra, Himanshu, Raju, Rajendra and H Kumar helped Sarika in this demo at Chinar Park.
