Solar box recovery of mixed-wax candle fragments and reuse on the island of Crete

This paper investigates the proof of principle of small-scale off-grid solar thermal batch recovery of candle wax on the island of Crete in astronomical winter season, where the Sun’s irradiance is in the range of 820–940 W×m−2. The investigation was carried out based on the recovery of unconsumed mixed petroleum-based paraffin and plant-based soy and palm-wax (250 g each) candle fragments and their re-casting into new 50–60 g blended-wax candles. Based on a converted family size (27 L) solar bo