Kota Kinabalu: Difficulties faced by rural folk in getting cooking gas supply has inspired Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) to create solar cookers as an alternative to traditional cooking methods.
A batch of resourceful students at the university on Saturday tested a range of tools they designed for harnessing the heat from the sun to cook food.
“It may not be as good as cooking gas but this is free, using the heat of the sun to cook your meal,” said senior lecturer Dr Harry Chong Lye Hin to reporters at the compound of the UMS School of Science and Technology.
Chong said they hoped the solar cooker could be used in rural areas to help rural folk as an alternative cooking method.
“We are targeting for the solar cooker application to be utilised in rural areas such as Long Pasia, which is far away, where the people cannot buy cooking gas easily, ” he said.
Chong also hoped to develop the project so that it can be used as an education aid for school students as well as to expose them to the utilisation of solar energy.
“Now people talk about saving energy. It is good to have some proof to show the school students to cut down the cost of energy usage,” he said.
Seven groups consisting of 76 second year students of the Environmental Science programme performed an experiment of cooking fish using their own designed solar cookers under the sun.
Chong said the project which took seven weeks saw the students build their solar cooking utensils from recycled materials such as aluminium foil, papers, cardboard, old newspapers, stainless steel, plywood and a layer of glass, which were used to trap the heat.
He also said all the materials were also cheap costing only between RM5 and RM20.
“To start cooking, we need to ‘track’ the sun before turning the solar cookers directly towards the sun in order to be able to better concentrate and absorb the sun’s rays and towards the food until the food is cooked,” he said.
He said with solar cookers it would take only between four and five minutes to cook a fish, and for prawns and squid it much more faster, taking only took two to three minutes while it takes about eight to 10 minutes to boil an egg.
Source – http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=71404
