Cooking foods outdoors, exploiting only the solar energy: it is the target of Solari stove conceived by the designer Bodin Hon that can boast, among the received prizes, also the Young plate of the prestigious “Adi Compasso d’oro International Award 2015”. The solar portable oven Solari integrates traditional knowledge in the preparation of foods and in the use of innovative insulating materials and control technologies. The food cooking process exploits the Fresnel principle to cook the various food types, like meat, poultry and fish, transforming the solar light into heat. Through the PMMA (polymethylmethacrylate) lens, the light is concentrated on an absorbing aluminium body that transfers the generated heat to the removable cooking vessel made of die-cast aluminium. The appliance body is constituted by a container coated by polished aluminium inside; a layer of wax-based phase-change material (PCM) preserves the collected heat and maintains the temperature at 80 °C, while the neoprene coating further insulates and protects the solar stove. The interactivity with digital technologies is the other outstanding element of Solari: the connection via smartphone allows monitoring in real time the cooking process of foods with an apposite enabling Bluetooth sensor and, through an app, exchanging recipes and cooking modalities with the other users of the community. In absence of sun, Solari can be used also through the common electric socket thanks to a thin polyamide heating element.
