A theoretical and experimental study on solar assisted cooking system to produce bulgur by using parabolic trough solar collector

In this dissertation, a pilot study has been performed for design, testing and model-based analysis of a cooking process-heat application assisted with Parabolic Trough Solar Collector (PTSC). An experimental setup consisting essentially of cooking pot, water preheating tanks, auxiliary heater, plate heat exchanger, thermal expansion tanks, PTSC array and measurement devices has been constructed and operated on campus of Gaziantep University to perform these purposes. The described Solar Assisted Process Heat (SAPH) system has been tested and monitored with a number of experiments under different operating conditions to investigate its technical feasibility and integrated performance for producing boiled wheat. On the other hand, thermal and mathematical models of each system component have been developed based on the fundamental scientific and engineering principles. Furthermore, physical insight of cooking phenomena has been described in detail, and three different cooking pots have been designed, tested and compared for their thermal performance. Finally, after model validations have been satisfied, a real-time transient simulation of the designed SAPH system has been carried out to specify the performance parameters and the annual solar fraction. The simulation results have shown that the solar fraction can supply 20.8% of the annual amount of energy consumed by the process heat application for the provided operating conditions.