Suzanne van Beek
The Fortune Cooker is a clean cook stove that aims to eliminate the use of open fire or inefficient stoves as well as reduce the amount of fuel to be used during cooking. It does that by combining solar energy with a second heat source, which can entail a variation on the rocket stove or a more common heat source like electricity or gas.
The functioning of the Fortune Cooker is based on the idea of compensating heat loss with solar energy. The second heat source named above will heat food to the desired temperature and can then be turned off. This component is placed within a well-insulated box, so that the loss of warmth is being reduced. The heat loss that remains is then reimbursed by solar energy. The top of the box is window, in order to let in solar heat. To optimize the amount of solar heat that falls into to the box, a mirror is placed on top of the box and the inside of the box is made of a reflective material.
During the cooking process the box needs to be oriented towards the sun, and the mirror needs to be in the right angle to reflect the beams upon the pan. The positioning of the product needs to be adapted during the day as the position of the sun changes.
The compensation of heat loss, accommodation of a heat source and food placement are the core functionalities of the Fortune Cooker. The function analysis in Appendix 4 discusses these and thereby identifies the boundaries for iteration. We used those insights to design two prototypes in Morocco.