Performance Analysis of Domestic LPG Cooking Stoves with Porous Media

Abstract

Porous media combustion is an area of current research aimed at improving the performances of combustion devices and thus its application to various systems is being widely explored. One of the potential applications of the porous media combustion is in the LPG cooking stoves. The present paper compares the efficiencies, emissions and energy cost for the conventional domestic LPG cooking stoves with and without the usage of various porous media like metal balls, pebbles and metal chips. With the usage of porous media, the maximum thermal efficiency of the stove was found to be 73% which for the conventional stoves was in the range of 67-69%.  In the emission test, the % volume of CO₂ was found to increase from 0.6875 to 0.9375 and the ppm of CO was found to decrease from 225 to 118. Energy cost analysis showed a saving of about 10%. Assuming the average cooking time in an Indian family to be 8 hours per day, over a period of one month, this saving is thus 7.6% of the cost of a 14.5 kg LPG cylinder available to Indian domestic consumers. These results show a better prospect for the use of porous media in domestic LPG cooking stoves.