Figures of merit and their relevance in the context of a standard testing and performance comparison methods for solar box - Cookers

Solar cookers, in particular solar box cookers, are becoming more popular and widespread. New ideas, manufacturing techniques and higher performance designs are being proposed. As usual, a good testing standard is an important tool for the market and for cooker acceptance from the users. In the past, testing procedures and figures of merit have been proposed [1-5] for cooker characterization. These have several limitations that can be eliminated with a deeper analysis of solar box cooker optical a thermal behavior. This paper proposes a revision of these procedures yielding more meaningful and useful Figures of Merit. This work can be a first step towards a future and more precise testing standard. This revision is formulated keeping an important characteristic of the existing proposals: simple and available instrumentation allowing these tests to be carried anywhere in the World, with a minimum of investment and/or lab conditions.