Solar hot air popcorn maker

ABSTRACT

Three students, Tony, Tyler, Devan, and their mentor Bart , as a school project for Humboldt State University, collaborated to design and build a hot air popcorn maker powered only by the sun. Using a heat exchanger constructed by a previous engineering student, a parabolic solar cooking dish, a fan, and a, solar panel and various recycled materials from scrap piles we created a near working device. Although we never made a full batch of popcorn, we did achieve hot enough temperatures (about 300i F within the heat exchanger) that we later found had popped the kernels we placed in there to see if they would pop

Introduction

This project was for a school group project for the ENG 114 class taught at Humboldt State University by Lonny Grafman. Many neat projects were done by other groups as well such as the solar cooker for CCAT, The thermal curtains CCAT_thermal_curtains_howto, and an earth ship wall.

Project Requirements

The project began with 4 components already assembled and ready to use:

• A rusty steal heat exchanger designed by a previous engineering student,
• A parabolic satellite dish converted into a solar cooker,
• A 12v D.C. fan and
• a solar panel to power the fan.

Our assignment was to take these elements and find a way to combine them into a functional hot air popcorn popper. The design began with the idea that a fan would be based at the apex of the dish and would blow air through a tube to the heat exchanger placed at the dish's focal point. The air would...

Design

The design began with the idea that a fan would be based at the apex of the dish and would blow air through a tube to the heat exchanger placed at the dish's focal point. The air would....

Costs

We only spent about $5 for the scrap metal

Discussion

This is still a work in progress.

Next Steps

The next steps it needs is to be refined to get more air, and hotter air flowing into the kernels. This is best done in summer when there is sun.

Conclusions

Parabolic_solar_cookers