Cooking In the Sun

Elburn Company’s Ovens Use Clean Solar Energy For Fuel

The Republican Thursday September 28, 2000
By Paul Sullivan, Correspondent

Paul Munsen, president of Elburn based manufacturer Sun Ovens International, says his solar powered ovens already used in more than 120 countries, can play an important role in saving the world’s environment. Paul Munsen has pitched his company’s ovens to the US Department of Commerce for marketing in many Third World countries as a cleaner alternative to wood and fossil fuel heat sources.

Kane County Board Chairman Mike McCoy argued persuasively at the recent County Board meeting for banning open burning in additional unincorporated parts of Kane County. He said he considered banning open burning a “logical progression of civilized society”

While our civilized society debates extending the burn ban in Kane County, Paul Munsen, president of Elburn based manufacturer, Sun Ovens International, deals with societies who depend upon open burning to survive.

More than two billion households, worldwide use wood, charcoal, dung or grass fires as the heat source for preparing their daily meals. Women in parts of Africa must spend all day searching for firewood to cook their evening meal. Munsen said the number one question each morning for two-thirds of the people in the world is a question few Americans ever think about: What can we eat today and how can we cook it? Their concern is not whether to fry, bake or broil the snapper, the question is much more elementary: What fuel is available for cooking dinner?

As the name implies, Sun Ovens International manufactures solar ovens, which provide a clean and limitless supply of cooking fuel. Sun Ovens solar ovens are used daily in 126 countries.

Munsen says deforestation is a major environmental crisis facing the world now. Wood fires account for 80 percent of the energy used in Kenya and the practice is rapidly stripping the land of trees. Some African women spend hours every day searching for firewood to cook the evening meal, hours that could be spend in more productive activities. Smoke from wood and dung fires cause lung and eye disease. Acute respiratory infections kill four to five million young children worldwide each year.

In our own hemisphere, the last tree standing in Haiti is expected to fall within three to five years. Soil erosion from clear-cut hills causes run-off into the rivers, polluting and ruining the Haitian fishing industry. The US government estimates, at the current rate of deforestation, Haiti will not be able to sustain life for its nine million people in five years. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

On a recent trip to Haiti to promote his solar ovens, Munsen met with the president of the Haiti Chamber of Commerce who told him it used to be that Haitians would never consider cutting a mango tree because they could survive on mangos. Now even mango trees are disappearing.

Munsen set up 40 of his family-sized solar ovens on the lawn of the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince to demonstrate the efficiency of the ovens. He said he could have sold all of the ovens to Embassy personnel. All four of the country’s television networks and major newspapers covered the demonstration.

In many parts of the world trees are converted into charcoal to use for cooking, a process which wastes 70 percent of the fuel energy of the tree. Bags of charcoal are sold on the city street corners and in shops. The average household in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital spends about 50 cents a day for charcoal. Anyone needing wood for a fire in the rural areas cuts a tree if they can find one. “In a country with an annual per capita income of $1,340, why would anyone buy charcoal if they could cut a tree?” Munsen asks.

Munsen is currently working with the U.S. Department of Commerce to find a Haitian partner to manufacture and market his oven in that country. The small ovens can be assembled with hand tools since electricity is available for about three or four hours a day in most of Haiti – and not necessarily the same hours every day.

Munsen said he can ship four times more unassembled small ovens than assembled ones in a freight container, and thereby lowers his shipping costs while providing needed jobs in the country where they are assembled. He expects to pay $3 a day for labor in Haiti, three times the average wage.
St. Charles resident, Marc Basset designed Sun Oven’s manufacturing facilities in Elburn as well as the assembly system. The oven itself was designed in 1986 by Tom Burns, A Milwaukee resident, who later sold his patent to Munsen and a group of investors.

Sun Ovens International currently has manufacturing facilities in Ghana, Honduras, Eritrea (Africa) and the Soviet Republic of Georgia

Sun Ovens International manufactures two models of solar ovens. Using nothing but energy from the sun, the small family sized oven reaches temperatures of 360 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit within 20 minutes, much like a standard electric oven. It is portable as a small suitcase and weighs only 21 pounds

The large oven really cooks. It heats to 500 degrees and can cook two meals a day for a village of 400 people, saving 340,000 pounds of wood annually from being cut for cooking fuel. What if it’s a rainy day, you say. Munsen says either solar oven works as long as the sun casts a shadow, but if it is monsoon season, the village can still have a hot meal since the large oven comes with back-up propane.

Solar ovens will not fry or broil food. A hamburger will be moist and tasty, but it will taste more like meatloaf since the meat is baked. Food like rice will not stick and cookies and cake will not burn on the bottom because heat is radiated throughout the cooking oven and does not come from a single direct source. Food does not have to be stirred and eggs can be hard-boiled with out water, although the oven is a handy tool for boiling water. Cooking times are about 15 minutes longer than with conventional ovens. Panels of polished metal flare out above the oven chamber and direct the suns rays into the oven where the heat is trapped, much like the heat captured when the windows of a car are closed. Even in subzero air temperatures, as long as the sun is out, the oven will capture the sun’s energy and cook as if it were a tropical day. The ovens will heat up quicker and cook food faster on a clear, low humidity day.

American service organizations such as the Rotarians are among Sun Ovens customers. Munsen said the Champaign/Urbana chapter of the Rotarians recently purchased and donated 168 family-size Sun Ovens to Uganda.