Science In Africa - Practical Action 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010

Kenya - summer 2008

Edwin
KEFRI - Kenya Forestry Research Institute
TMSC school
Lake Victoria - water treatment
OSIENALA - Friends of Lake Victoria
Solar cooker
Solar fruit dryer
St. Julie Centre
Jamhury tree nursery
Tumaini tree nursery
Oscar Oyalo and his agroforestry farm
Malava landslide restoration
Firewood burning clay stoves
Kiln
Charcoal dust recyclation
Tumaini 2nd Environmental Seminar

Solar Cookers

Ainea and Einok settling a solar cooker made of car window shield. It is rounded with binding wire and taped properly.

There is a hook at the bottom of the cooker, so we can adjust its position depending whether it is morning, noon or afternoon.

Same type of solar cooker introduced at Dunga beach (Kisumu). We discussed solar cookers and clay stoves with Prof. Othieno from OSIENALA. He is a physicist and specialist on renewable energy.

Our first solar cooked meal at Dunga beach was ugali. We left it on the sun for too long time, after three hours it was already overcooked. It tasted like a cake.

At the Solar Cookers International office in Nairobi I was given a sample of their aluminium foil for further experiments.

Later we made this simple type of solar cooker from aluminium foil given by SCI at the Czech Republic at Heureka seminar.

This type of solar cooker can be made just for $3, it is easy and quick to make, there are no material remains! We need just three things: durable aluminium foil, binding wire and good quality stick tape. Roll of foil used by SCI is 130 cm wide so we cut a rectangle 130 cm x 65 cm. There is no more cutting of foil needed! Good tape is hard to get but I found it even in a supermarket in Kakamega. It is quite expensive, I think it was 250 KES per 50 m tape . A binding wire they sell in hardware stores, we need 4 m per one cooker. If we dont have a cheap durable alumunium foil we still can use a car window shield which is available in Kenya but it sells for cca $4. If we manage to produce cookers for $3 or less, that could boost selfsustaining spreading of solar cookers.

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