Determination of energy efficiency of non-bio-fuel household cooking stoves

The efficiency of the commonly used non-bio-fuel household cooking stoves has been determined experimentally. The stoves considered are those fuelled with kerosene, electricity and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Two different designs of each stove type were considered and their efficiencies were determined based on the standard water-boiling test (WBT). Our analyses showed that the LPG stove has the highest efficiency at about 61% while the kerosene has the least at 37%. We note that the efficiencies of these stoves are higher or much higher than those found for any of the most improved bio-fuel cooking stoves reported in the literature. In terms of effectiveness, the LPG stove is also comparatively the most effective for water boiling while the electric stove is the least. Our results showed also that at the current official costs of fuels, the kerosene stove appears to be the cheapest to operate. The implications of these results in terms of the overall energy consumption in the household setup and opportunities for energy saving in the set up are discussed. Nigerian Journal of Physics Vol. 16(2) 2004: 171-179