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World's largest Solar Steam Cooking System at Tirumala, Andhra Pradesh

The world's largest solar steam cooking system has been installed by the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam (TTD) at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh. The system has been installed by M/S Gadhia Solar Energy Systems, Valsad under a demonstration scheme of the Ministry with almost 50% financial support. Balance of the cost has been borne by the TTD trust. The system has a capacity to prepare food for 15000 people/day and employs automatic tracking solar dish concentrators, which convert water into high pressure steam. The steam thus generated is being used for cooking purposes in the kitchen of TTD. It has been hooked up with the existing boiler working on diesel so as to make the system reliable under all climatic conditions.

The system has been designed to generate over 4000 kgs of steam/day at 180 C and 10 kg/cm2 which is sufficient to cook two meals for around 15,000 persons. It is modular in nature and consists of 106 automatic tracked parabolic concentrators arranged in series and parallel combination, each of 9.2 sq. meter reflector area. Each unit of concentrators is connected to a central steam pipeline going to the kitchen. The system is made of indigenous components and the reflectors are of acrylic mirrors having reflectivity over 75%. Its installation was completed during September 2002 and was inaugurated by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh on 11th October 2002. The system is expected to save around 1,18,000 litres of diesel per year, valued at Rs.23 lakh.
World's Largest Solar Steam Cooking System at Tirupathi in Andhra Pradesh

The total cost of the system is about Rs.110 lakh, which includes back up boiler, utensils and annual maintenance contract for 5 years. A total of 6 such systems have been installed in the country. This technology could be very useful at places where cooking is done on a very large scale such as ashrams, temples, gurudwaras, and army canteens.

4.14 To encourage the state nodal agencies to take up large-scale promotion of solar cookers in their respective states and to recognise their efforts made in this direction, the Ministry has been giving annual awards to them. The award for the best performance for the year 2000-01 was given to the State of Gujarat at a function held at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi in the beginning of the year.

Solar Air Heating

4.15 Solar air heating technology can effectively be used for drying or curing of agricultural products, space heating for comfort, regeneration of dehumidifying agents, seasoning of timber, curing of industrial products, tanning of leather and many more industrial and agro-processing activities. It can act as a partial energy delivery (PED) or a full energy delivery (FED) unit. The PED units require a back up energy system. Depending on the drying process, required temperature, microclimate and site conditions, the technology has the potential of saving considerable conventional energy in a variety of industrial establishments.

4.16 Various kinds of solar dryers have so far been developed and used in different field conditions in the country. These include cabinet dryer, roof integrated solar air heating system, tunnel dryer, dryer based on solar wall metal cladding technique, solar powered solar air dryer and dryer based on solar hot water system coupled with liquid-air heat exchanger. Whereas around 5000 sq. m. collector area for solar air heating has so far been installed with financial support of the Ministry, a good initiative has been taken by a number of manufacturers, NGOs, and other organisations for developing and popularising solar drying technology. MNES is supporting a special demonstration programme to evaluate the field performance of various new technologies and innovative designs and for establishing the techno-economic viability for specific applications. A solar system for drying medicinal plants has been proposed under the programme and several other demonstration projects on solar air-drying are under consideration. A national level workshop on solar drying is being planned to discuss in detail the issues concerning solar drying. The Ministry is also developing a project for the dissemination of solar drying technologies in the country. Soft loan facility for already proven designs is available from IREDA.

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