Hawaii Man's Invention Really Cookin'

HONOLULU -- A Hawaii inventor has developed something he believes could change the world.

Inventor John Grandinetti cooked lunch for friends Sunday out on the lawn in Kahala. His heat source, a solar oven, looks more like a children's slide, but it will fry foods, bake bread and boil water.

The oven is really a long, double-walled vacuum tube filled with vegetable oil that sits in a reflective-compound parabolic curve -- a fancy name for a solar funnel that focuses sunlight on the tube. The outside of the tube is cool to the touch. But the inside reaches temperatures as high as 400 degrees -- 300 degrees on a cloudy day.

On Sunday, Grandinetti fried sausage, baking eggplant parmesan and boiled spaghetti noodles. Grandinetti said he did not create the solar oven for money. He said he is concerned about the massive deforestation around the world and people down cutting trees to use for cooking fires.

"I was in Tibet, and I followed three Tibetan girls through the mountains one day. An hour and a half out, an hour and a half back just to get to the nearest tree areas. Everything else denuded on the mountain. I've seen it in these countries," he said. "Solar cooking would work to eliminate misery and save the forest and improve the environmental conditions."

The solar tube only costs about $21. The frame and insulation are made from inexpensive materials. And it has another use: With clean water becoming a worldwide problem, the solar oven gets hot enough to boil water, which will purify it. The solar cooker can perform solar pasteurization in 15 minutes. It can pasteurize more than a gallon of water on a sunny day.

John hopes a Chinese industry will take his design and mass-produce cookers that can be used in developing nations, using a clean, renewable energy source for generations to come.

Grandinetti has made arrangements to give one of his cookers to people living at beach parks in Waianae who complain about the high cost of charcoal and gas.