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This review explored recent developments in reinforced composite design and applications for improved radiation shielding and high percentage attenuation. Radiation energy moves as a wave. Thus unguarded exposure to high-energy radiation is inimical to the human tissue and the overall health standing of individuals which may result in cancer, tumour, skin burns and cardiovascular diseases. Radiation energy is conventionally contained using lead-based shields. However, recent literature has faulted the continued use of lead citing drawbacks such as high toxicity, poisoning, lack of chemical stability, heaviness and hazardous after life handling. Consequently, the trending research evidence has shown mass deviation towards the use of reinforced polymer composite as an alternative to lead due to their light weight, low cost, high resilience, good mechanical tenacity and interesting electrical properties. The present review therefore summarizes the criteria for ionizing radiation shielding material design, mechanism of radiation energy shielding, beam penetration in composite shielding materials, theoretical shielding parameters in the design of radiation protective materials, scheme of reinforced composite material selection for shielding purposes and various control variables in the design of composite for ionizing radiation shielding. In addition, an attempt was made to highlight gaps in research and draw future scope for further studies. It is expected that this review will give some guidance to the future exploration in the design and application of reinforced composite with respect to ionizing radiation shielding processes.

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A functional parabolic solar cooker was designed and constructed to serve as an alternate renewable source of energy for cooking and to also reduce the adverse effects of other sources of energy on the environment. The solar cooker was fabricated using cheap, locally sourced available materials in Nigeria. Experimental investigation was carried out on the produced model in Omu-Aran Metropolis, Kwara State, Nigeria in December 2016. Thereafter other investigations were carried out from January to December 2017 and lastly in January 2018 between the hours of 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. local time for both stagnation and sensible heating, using 2 L of water at every experiment. The average energy and exergy efficiencies of the parabolic cooker were about 39% and 44% respectively. The instability of the energy efficiency occurred as a result of optical and thermal losses from the reflector and pot, as well as the varying environmental conditions. Mathematical expressions were used to calculate the theoretical values of energy and exergy efficiencies using Minitab, while the statistical analysis showed that there was no significant difference between the experimental and predicted results for exergy and energy efficiencies of both cookers at p > 0.05, this validated the design.