Unique and fast cooking. . .
Here's our newest solar cooker that combines the best qualities of oue previous
SolaReflex 900 Parabolic (shown below) and Pyramid cooker, and has some unique optional features not available on any other solar cooker.
It's called the SolaReflex AA Octagon Parabolic Cooker and it has now replaced both the 900 and Pyramid cookers.
Our Octagon Parabolic Cooker is now available to purchase by using the PayPal order links below.
The optional clear dome pot cover order link (for boiling water and baking bread) is also available. It's visible in the photo below of the
SolaReflex 900 in the snow. It also allows you to cook on very cold and windy days by trapping the solar heat.
It's an 8-surface deep-tapered parabolic concentrator that uses our new 95.5% reflective
SolaReflex AA mirror surface, weather resistant anodized aluminum reflector panel
and is fully adjustable to all angles of the sun for more consistant all day heating anywhere on earth.
It cooks as fast as the 900 because all the concentrated reflected sunlight completely covers an 11" cooking pot with over 350 degrees F of midday dry temperature heat, not just a 3" focal point hot spot.
It cooks more completely so it's better for cooking all types of food and baking bread. Fried or scrambled eggs will cook in about 12 minutes, while 2-3 pound roasts will be well done and browned in about 60-90 minutes of full midday sunlight, depending on size.
It's quick and easy to setup and use, and as you can see in the right photo, browns meat chicken and fish just as the 900 does--but it does it better and at a lower price. It will even fry bacon and sausage!
The optional $59 Clear Dome Pot Cover is shown on the right being used for baking bread in the Octagon Parabolic. It is ideal for preserving and increasing cooking temps on cold, windy and light cloudy days. We've recently added, at no extra cost, a unique new "heat absorber boost ring" that fits inside the clear pot cover and increases heating temps by another 25 degrees F so you can now fast boil water or bake bread nearly all day long, even on windy or cold summer or winter days. It's made of the same Ultra Blackflex anodized aluminum heat absorber sheets that we use in our top-rated Solar Forced Air (BISFA) heating panels.
Another unique optional product solar smokes your food while it's solar cooking without lighting a match or lifting the clear lid. You don't need to burn lots of precious wood
to add delicious smoked flavor to your food.
It's our $39 Fresnel Solar Smoker flexible plastic lens that has a long 24" long focal point.
This flexible plastic 11" square lens concentrates sunlight into a 1" super hot (1500+ degrees F) focal point that smokes wood chips inside the cooking pot. You only need a tablespoon of chips or food grade wood pellets, placed inside a small aluminum foil cup near or on the food.
By hand-holding the lens in full sunlight in front of the cooker, you can send the highly concentrated sunlight directly though the pot's clear glass lid every 15 minutes and lightly burn the wood (no flame needed), filling the air inside with tasty smoke from hickory, mesquite or your favorite cooking wood, as you can see in the photos on the left. In the right close up photo you can see the smoke rising from the hickory wood chips surrounded by a small hand-formed aluminum foil cup. A food thermometer probe (not inluded with cooker) is seen protruding from the hole in the center of the glass lid where a screw-in knob use to be secured. This provides exact food temperature readings.
Also upcoming is a Solar distilling container that easily fits into the center cooking position on the base. It transforms any foul or salt water into ultra pure drinking water, and as added feature, will also distill wine into brandy, and add the pure essence of any herb, spice or flower to your pure distilled water or spirits as the water vaporizes. This is a higher temperature distiller than our Solar Still Water Purifier that will vaporize water or alcohol at around 170 degrees F. One pint of fluid can be distilled per day.
The Octagon Parabolic cooker is very lightweight at only six pounds, is weatherproof even in salt air environments, has excellent wind resistant on moderate wind days, easy to set up and use, and is collapsible to 12" for portability and lower shipping fees.
More photos with details will be upcoming on a new Octagon Parabolic web page, so please check back. To read a recent solar cooker review with photos by Chris Smith, leader of the Yahoo Solar Cooking chat room:
click here to jump to the Solar Cooking Wiki.
To join the informative Yahoo Solar Cooking chat room please click on this link.
For you solar cookers and survivor planners that want the perfect way to keep on cooking, baking, and Pasteurizing water long after the sun goes down and on cloudy days, we'll soon be introducing a unique new design portable and lightweight outdoor biofuel cooker that uses a very inexpensive, clean burning waste product--compressed sawdust-- as the fuel. It's perfect for use at home, on camping and backpacking trips, and in emergencies.
It's called the Wood Pellet Camping and Survival Stove and unlike the large, expensive pellet stove home heaters and small cookers
that require power for the fan and auger that feeds pellets into the fire, ours needs no power, fan or auger and boils a quart of water in about 7-9 minutes or two quarts in 12-15 minutes. It also cooks on light rainy days, shown in the photo on right,
in light to moderate winds, and only weighs two pounds and measures 5" by 7" tall. It is the first commercially produced portable wood pellet cooker that does not require a fan and power supply.
If you run out of wood pellets, it can also burn small pieces of dried branches, twigs, seed pits, bamboo or chunks of scrap wood, but it's not as efficient or as hot and it smokes more.
It's far more efficient and safer for cooking than a open camp fire.
Normal hard wood pellets burn at about 1,500 degrees F in our stove, while scrap wood and twigs are about 400 degrees cooler, and sootier. By the way, a 40 pound bag of wood pellets only costs about $7 and will cook nearly two months of meals!
This makes it well-suited for developing nations or in major disastors where cooking fuel is often too expensive and hard to find.
We're even working on a collapsible version for more portability.
It will bake bread, potatoes, pop popcorn, bbq delicious steaks in flat pans, wok veggies and meats, and cook perfect rice. It easily Pasteurizes two gallons of water with one cooker, and when two stoves are positioned side by side, it will Pasteurize four gallons quicker. Our prototype cookers are nearly finished being tested and we're projecting spring availability. It's like cooking on your kitchen stove or gas camping stove, but the fuel is much cheaper or free and you're always outdoors.
Our new Pellet Camp stove uses only 1/2 cup of pellets to cook eggs or a meal for two, a cup to boil 1-2 quarts (or liters) of water or food, or two cups to cook a 3-4 quart large family meal. More pellets can be added to continue cooking for longer times. Wood pellets offer twice the cooking time as the same amount of uncompressed wood, and they burn much cleaner since they are made of pure sawdust from good quality wood that has been pre-dried and compressed--with no additives. Instead of hauling it off to landfills, it's processed and made into a high quality dry biofuel product. That way, more trees don't need to be cut down, which helps the environment. Check back on our new Pellet Camp Stove web page by clicking here for more details and photos.
Questions? click here: cleardomesolar@sbcglobal.net
Compared to our discontinued SolaReflex 600 reflector, cooking times with the 900 parabolic have been reduced by about 15 minutes, so meals for four people such as soup, chicken and fish will take only 35-60 minutes. We recently solar baked two delicious potatoes in 50 minutes. This is about the same amount of cooking time that parabolic cookers over twice the size of the 900 usually take, which is about the same time as a conventional oven. This is the world's hottest, fastest cooking 24" parabolic or box cooker made. The best solar box cookers will take over twice as long as the 900 to cook a meal, and they won't brown the food.
ClearDome Solar Thermal has discovered a very simple method of reaching flame temperatures without a flame--by significantly improving the design of our former SolaReflex 600° parabolic cooking reflector. The SolaReflex 900 (seen solar cooking on snow at left) is ideal for everyday cooking at home, camping trips, boats, emergencies and use in third world countries.
We’ve found a more efficient way to condense focused, reflected sunlight into an even smaller, sharper 2-3” hot spot. This improvement increases radiant solar heating temperatures to over 900°F! (that’s 482°C) Instead of laminating our diffused 97.4% reflective SolaReflex foil to the 24” parabolic ABS dish blank, it’s now being bonded to the surface by a patented process that makes an even smoother and less diffused reflective surface than the 600.
It’s also more scratch and salt air resistant than previous models with the addition of an invisible protective coating, sacrificing only about 1% of the reflectivity, while preserving the outstanding .03 level of emissivity. Accelerated aging tests indicate a minimum 7-10 year outdoor life, with only minor loss of reflectivity. The 900 is not designed to be optically perfect. A slightly diffused surface spreads the hot spot diameter, making it safer to use and cook food. High temperature solar energy to heat conversion has, until now been an expensive and complicated process.
This durable scratch-resistant SolaReflex metallic surface, applied to a sturdy weather and wind resistant 1/8” thick ABS dish makes it practical to mass-produce in unlimited numbers. This will surely help popularize the use of smaller affordable solar thermal energy componants around the globe.
Our 900X reflectors are so mirror-like (photo at left), with only a 1” diameter hot spot that radiant temperatures are hot enough to burn a hole completely through our thick Blackflex aluminum foil in about a minute! In the photo on the right, the 900X reflector is seen on the right half, looking through the hole on the backside of the Blackflex. We recorded a 1345°F (that’s 735°C) temperature at the hot spot. Aluminum melts at 1220°F.
Because of the extreme and sharp focused heat it’s nearly impractical for cooking food, but our 900X scientific parabolic heat generator is now being used for other purposes, such as solar thermal electric generation, scientific and medical uses, and classroom demonstrations. We're also testing a dual 900X parabolic that has a single focal point.
And we're now selling an even hotter center focus metal 24" parabolic solar reflector with a 6"
focal point hot spot 1/4" round that reaches over 2,500 degrees F! It's also not designed for solar cooking because it will melt aluminum, copper and brass and is designed for scientific/industrial/educational uses. The calibrated Fluke thermometer shows 2,424 degrees F at the super bright hot spot to the left, and the temp kept rising and maxed out the thermometer at 2500F. It's called the SolaReflex 2500 Spun Parabolic because the inside of the sturdy spun aluminum dish is highly polished, then specially coated with our 97% reflective SolaReflex material. A patented hard transparent protective coating is then applied for many years of outdoor use minimal loss of reflectivity. A support stand is not included, but there is a 1.5" mounting hole at the low point in the dish.
For more details on the 2500 spun alumimun heat reflector, please click here to email questions to solar heating designer Deris Jeannette. Sorry, this extreme solar heating reflector is not available to the general public, but if your business or school needs to generate extremely high temperatures from sunlight for scientific, survival or educational uses, it is available to order for $295 once you are pre approved by email.
Fastest, hottest 900 cooking times
This outstanding solar cooking reflector is so hot, you can actually make charcoal smoke inside a pot or pan when placed next to food in an aluminum foil holder! We use a clear glass lid on a black aluminum pot to let the concentrated reflected solar energy directly heat the food and smoke the wood. You get authentic wood barbecue flavor using only one charcoal briquette or your favorite type of wood. Solar cooked food has always been considered the tastiest, and now the flavor can have that outdoor cooking taste-- without even striking a match.
You can easily fry bacon with the SolaReflex 900; cook eggs, bake bread, cook rice and vegetables, and Pasteurize foul water. A one-pound steak, fish or chicken takes about 35 minutes to cook rare and 45 minutes for it to be browned and well done on a sunny day. It's like having both a stove and an oven fueled only by free and pure solar energy--the sun! Slow solar cooking now is a thing of the past with the 900. Browing food is easy by using a black aluminum pot and a clear glass lid.
Wind is not a bother for the 900 because of the rigid dish and support base construction. We've cooked in 30 MPH winds by placing the pot under our Clear Dome pot cover, or inside our Clear Box oven, shown below. Try cooking with a gas stove outdoors on a windy day and after about 5-10 MPH winds, the flames blow out. Delivery is normally about 2-3 weeks after your order is confirmed through PayPal.
This specially designed 8.5 pound oval shaped, unbreakable reflecting dish assembly is made to condense and reflect solar energy downward about 16" away on to the black metal cooking container, as the photo shows. The dish design is unlike any other parabolic cooker because of the offset low point on the dish that creates the hot spot below the center line. Little or no reflected energy is lost because of pot shadows, so combined with a superior small parabolic design, the 96% diffused reflectivity, and a sturdy anodized aluminum support base, it’s at least 15%-20% more efficient that perfect centered parabolic dishes.
It's also easier to pack for travel, set up and use.
Sun adjustments with most
parabolic cookers can be a delicate operation so food doesn't spill from
the pot sitting on a balanced stand. A larger, heavier support stand is
required to prevent tipping on windy days.
Also, the user has a greater
risk of getting burned by food spillage or hot spot skin and eye exposure
during the sun adjustments using conventional parabolic cookers..
As you can see, cooking pots and pans sit on the 900 reflector base where the focused sun energy can land on the pot and away from the user. And, unlike other parabolic cookers, the 900 temperatures can be easily adjusted. This has heating temps comparable to a toaster oven when the pot is close to the reflector with a 7" hotspot, but more like a high temperature gas stove when it's at the 16" focal point, with a 2-3" wide hot spot.
In summer months when the
sun is high overhead, we suggest elevating the pot 8-12" for maximum heating,
as the right 
photo
shows. We used a clear polycarbonate container below the pot, but you can
use an overturned large pot or metal box. Notice the focused bright hot
spot on the side of the pot. A high sun angle reduces heat gain and
extends cooking times when cooking on the stand below.
No
heavy counter balance is required to offset the weight of the pot, so the
reflector is screwed to the sturdy collapsible base with only two adjustable
thumbscrews.The thumbscrews attach the reflector to the base support legs
and make it easy to set up and adjust the reflector up or down as the sun
moves. Only one or two sun adjustments are necessary for most meals. Wind
resistance is increased by a tightening of the wing nuts. A slight
nudge to the left on the back of the base, and a slight pivot up or down
movement of the reflector is all that's needed for perfect and easy alignment
every 30 minutes of cooking time. That means you can warm up to five gallons
of shower or dish washing water, or melt that much ice or snow in
black metal pots during midday heating.
We suggest care and caution because it's so hot
Since all food cooking requires high temperatures we must caution the user to exercise care, common sense and practice safety as you would around any stove or oven because the hot spot focal point can reach temperatures as hot as a flame. Children should not use these reflectors without direct adult supervision. The cook or anyone moving the pot should use sunglasses and wear cooking mitts or a towel to reduce the chance of unexpected burns from the pot or hot spot.
Meat, potatoes, chicken
or fish will brown or even blacken when cooked in pots with clear lids
unless it's
turned about every 15-20 minutes because it’s much like stove cooking,
but all the heat comes from above. A single smoldering charcoal briquette
inside this pot with a glass lid (right photo) adds the delicious BBQ smoke
flavor to chicken fajita. The 900 will melt plastic and burn leaves
or wood that are held in the hot spot for more than 5 seconds, so only
metal or tempered glass pots and pans should be used. Short 2-second
duration exposure to skin in the 900 hot spot will feel quite hot but not
normally cause burns, however.
And, the reflector is safer to use on concrete, earth, or non-burnable surfaces because even the unfocused reflected sunlight is quite hot if the reflector is turned away from the pot. Questions? click here to send solar heating designer Deris Jeannette your email.
With all metal pots including the lid, instead of heating the bottom of the pot, the reflector side of the pot absorbs and transforms the focused solar energy into heat that is then absorbed by the food or water inside the pot. Black pots with clear lids heat faster and will brow meat, as in the photo above. Evaporating food moisture or 1/4" of water helps to steam the food.
This parabolic cooker has such a high level of full spectrum solar reflectivity it will even heat food or water to temperatures above 150 degrees F on light overcast or partly cloudy days when there is little or no wind. That's perfect for reheating leftovers or making coffee and tea.
We prefer using thin black aluminum pots with clear glass lids to cook nearly all foods. Other dark pots and pans can be used, but with lower heat generation. The concentrated reflected light is so intense that occasionally some green vegetables will turn white on top unless they are covered with water or a lid.
The heat level and size of the hot spot focal point can be adjusted by moving the pot closer to the reflector, which de-focuses the light and spreads the heat, which lowers the temperature. This method is suggested when baking bread or large cuts of meat. A pound of frozen (15-30°F) boneless chicken breasts or fish will take about 10 minutes to defrost, then fully cook in another 40-50 minutes using the glass lid on a black pan. Raw vegetables will take 5-10 minutes longer to soften since they contain less protein.
While low angle early morning and late afternoon sunlight make it impossible to cook with most box solar cookers because of shadows inside the box, the SolaReflex 900 will start cooking meals or heating water 30 minutes after sunrise. At the end of the day, meals can be cooked up to two hours before sunset. Winter is actually the best cooking season for the 900 because of the low sun angle and the sun's closer proximity to earth.
In high mid-day summer
sun, the maximum level of heat can be achieved by placing our Clear Box
oven, a clear container pot riser, provided on request, or a 9" metal box
or pot under the pot to elevate it more in direct line with the sun's high
angle. Since this reflector is designed as an "offset" oval reflector,
it will still generate ample concentrated heat energy when the pot is sitting
in the normal position on the base.
When traveling, the reflector can be detached from the base support, by unscrewing the wing nuts and screws. The sturdy legs collapse and it measures less than 3” thick, so it’s easy to pack or ship.
With sunglasses on, the user can focus the extremely bright hot spot on the right backside of the pot, then once the sun's reflection has traveled to the left side in about 30 minutes, repeat the same movement to insure maximum heating.
Besides the finished assembled 900 parabolic dishes with the base supports, individual ABS 24" uncoated reflector blanks and SolaReflex coated 900 reflective dishes are available without support stands for hobbyists, students, scientists and developing nations that could assemble them on site to reduce labor costs.
Our anodized aluminum support bases can also be sold individually on request or the user could make their own similar looking base. SolaReflex 97.4% reflective foil can be purchased separately from our Amazon order pages.
Optional clear unbreakable heat containers for cold, windy day cooking
Few sunlit days are too cold or too windy for cooking when either our unbreakable polycarbonate Clear dome pot cover, below, or the Clear box oven on right, is used for cooking. By adding either heat resistant cover, your pot will heat faster on partly cloudy, windy or cold sunny days, even in the snow!
The clear covers eliminate excessive heat loss caused by wind or cold air. It is the best way to create a greenhouse effect around your cooking pot without messing with flimsy plastic bags. They also trap heat and provide insulation to keep the pot and food warm when it is removed from the cooking reflector.
Both food-safe polycarbonate
containers can replace plastic cooking bags and increase heating temperatures,
despite wind or cold air. They will also work as a small size water distiller
and purify any polluted water, and 
should
be used when cooking bread or larger meals.
Email
Deris for more details or questions.
Up to four quart round pots or small baking pans will fit inside the 8" x 13" x 11" space of the Clear box oven (shown at right), which comes with a removable snap down lid. The clear dome pot cover on the left measures 12" round by 7" high and has a chrome metal handle that stays cool. A good quality four-quart non-stick coated black camping pot is shown under the pot cover. A similar two-quart pot is also available. A three quart aluminum pot with a clear glass lid is shown inside the clear box oven.
The camping pots cost under
$15 each and can be ordered from the Clear
box web page.
Both of our crystal clear,
heavy duty solar heat containers sit on the reflector base of the SolaReflex
900 and create much higher surrounding ambient heat temperatures (nearly
than three times the outside air temperature) surrounding the heating container
while the incoming concentrated and front side direct solar energy heats
the pot. Click
here to jump to our clear box oven web
pages for more details and to order.
By using either of these heat retention products with any our ClearDome parabolic reflectors, you create a hybrid solar cooker that combines the best attributes of the box oven insulation and parabolic reflector high heat generation.
Questions? click
here to email solar heating designer Deris Jeannette.
Please browse our home
page at www.cleardomesolar.com
for more information about all of our unique solar heating products, including
solar water heating pads for outdoor spas, solar forced air heaters, thermal
fabrics and upcoming, our new reheatable Sun Pads that store solar heat
energy for personal body comfort anytime.
Solar air heaters · Thermal barrier fabric and Solar cooling panels/ heating drapes · SolaReflex parabolic solar cookers · Hot tub/spa water heating pads
SolarReflex reflective/daylighting material (formerly SolarFlex) · Blackflex heat absorber foil · Rechargable Sun Heating Pad
ClearDome Solar
Thermal
Ingenious
solar thermal products for everyday living, emergencies & survival
© 1999-2009,
ClearDome Solar Thermal LLC, 3368 Governor Dr, 153-F San Diego, CA 92122
U.S.A.
619/990-7977
or call "cleardomesolar" free on Skype
cleardomesolar@sbcglobal.net
6/1/09
