A Method to Conserve Energy in Rice Cooking

Abstract

Rice is Sri Lanka’s staple food, eaten at least once a day by almost all citizens, and, twice a day by the majority. Electrical rice cookers have become the neat and convenient choice of a large number of households nowadays. If we assume there are 1 million rice cookers operational in this country and each rice cooker consumes 1 kW of energy in average, then for 30mins of rice cooking twice a day, it will consume 1 million units (kWh) of electricity in total. This amounts to roughly 3.4% of our daily national electricity generation. In this research, a novel energy saving rice cooking method was explored. That was to soak the raw rice before-introducing it to the rice cooker. The cooking time was measured against the soaking time. The appearance of cooked rice and its taste were also examined. As the soaking time was increased from Ohrs to 8hrs, a gradual reduction of cooking time was noticed. More specifically, after 8 hours of soaking, a 30% energy saving was recorded for samba rice, and, 24% energy saving for nadu and punni sambasarieties. In other words by soaking the rice overnight, one could save 25%-30% of cooking energy. Interestingly the appearance or the taste did not change with soaking time. A conservative 25% saving of cooking time converts to 0.25 million units of electricity, and, rewards a 0.85% saving to the nation. If the saved energy can seize one Diesel power plant from operation, the benefit will go both to the economy as well as to the environment. India, China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh alike joining this scheme, our concept can become a global energy saver.