New cooking stove promises to save up to 50% fuel

Cooking stoves that promises to save fuel up to 50 per cent may soon be available in the markets in Bengaluru and elsewhere.

The IIT Guwahati, that developed the stoves has recently signed a MoU wilth M/s. Agnisumukh Energy Solutions Pvt. Ltd, a Bengaluru-based company transferring the technology for commercial production and making them available for consumers.

A statement issued by IIT Guwahati said a research team headed by Prof. P Muthukumar of the department of mechanical engineering developed the ‘Porous Radiant Burners (PRB)' for cooking-stoves and can be operated with LPG, biogas and kerosene.

"These indigenously developed cook-stoves equipped with specially-designed double layered PRBs provide fuel saving in the range of 25-50 % and reduces CO and NOx emissions by about 80 per cent. The newly developed PRB is ideally suited for both gaseous fuels like LPG, biogas, PNG and liquid fuels like kerosene, methanol and ethanol, for domestic as well as community/commercial cooking," Muthukumar said.

The IIT Guwahati research team said they believed that the commercialisation of PRB-based cooking stoves across the country would provide a huge LPG saving of about 13 lakh domestic cylinders every day. It would also have a global impact on the burner-based applications.

TG Sitharam, director of IIT Guwahati said PRB-based cooking stove technology would play a key role in reducing the overall fuel consumption in the cooking sector, leading to a huge annual saving of about Rs. 50,000 crore for the government, thus reducing the financial burden significantly and conserving energy. Further, it will also provide a better cooking environment by reducing CO and NOx emissions.

Chief Executive officer of M/s. Agnisumulh Energy Solutions Pvt. Ltd, the industry partner of the project, Hari Rao said, "Indian cooking system and global culinary world destroyed the nutrition of food by introducing modern fuel (LPG, Natural Gas) which reduced the intensity of heat but increased the pressure, while the traditional practice of cooking was based on intense heat totally on atmospheric pressure. The Porous Radiant Burner technology will bring back the best practices in thermal management in cooking and industrial applications.”

One of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) is to ensure availability and usage of clean cooking fuel to all households by 2030. However, SDG India dashboard indicates that only 56 per cent of households use clean cooking fuel. The country needs to cover around 44 per cent of households in the next nine years, said the IIT Guwahati statement.

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