Solar Cooking and Food Dryingin Sudan

An Overlooked Opportunity for Technology Justice

• Rationale:• In Sudan and most of sub-Saharan Africa, over

80% of the total energy consumed nationwide (in energy units) is thermal, mostly used for cooking food. The fuel, apart from a miniscule fraction from LPG, is fire wood and charcoal. A typical national energy balance chart by the Sudanese Ministry of Energy is depicted below. This situation has persisted over the past 20 years.

On the other hand, Sudan is blessed with one of the highest values of solar

insolation in the world, throughout most of the year – see map under.

Solar cooking is the logical viable option for the alleviation of this phenomenal need for cooking energy.

The technology is rudimentary, accessible to developing industry. The obvious and clear positive environmental impact is profound. From a business point of view, the sheer magnitude of the demand points to a huge and lucrative, albeit still potential, market.

Likewise solar food drying offers tremendous food security benefits, especially to small farmers in remote production areas, where lack of access to preservation facilities and/or reliable transportation to markets, results in post-harvest waste that reaches ridiculous proportions.

How it Works

There are hundreds of different solar cooker designs world wide. They all fall into one of two generic types:1. Cookers using the principle of the green

house effect: an insulated box with a glass cover.

2. Concentrating cookers, employing parabolas or Fresnel lenses.

The Work by Solar Energy Enterprises Company (SEEC)

• Motivated by the above facts and observations, we at SEEC have worked in the local design, manufacture and dissemination of solar thermal utilities, like domestic dish and box cookers, food dryers and large-scale community kitchens, with units cooking three meals a day for a thousand people.

• The photos under depict some representative products developed and marketed over the past twenty five years.

1.1 Large scale community catering unitsThe design is based on a special (Scheffler) 9 m2 reflector, producing up to 4 kW of thermal energy. The reflector is polar mounted, and is driven by a mechanical clock.

1.2 Solar Dish Cookers

Solar Box Cookers

Food Dryers – Family Scale: Units for Blue Nile State

Food Dryers – Large Scale

This is technology justice for the taking.What is stopping us?