Life cycle Assessment (LCA) and Techno-economic Assessment (TEA) of medium scale (5–10 kW) LPG cooking stove with two-layer porous radiant burner

Abstract

Any newly developed product should comply the international standards of energy efficiency, environmental impact and cost effectiveness for sustaining in the global market. Recently, many researchers have developed LPG stoves with Porous Radiant Burner (PRB) for domestic and commercial scale cooking applications. These stoves showed better performance in terms of higher thermal efficiency and lower emissions. However, their commercial viability is yet to be tested. In this manuscript, economic and environmental impact of a medium scale (5–10 kW) LPG cook-stove with two-layer PRB (Mishra [5]) have been presented. A comparative study with reference to a conventional LPG cook-stove of same capacity has been also performed. The techniques involved in the current investigation are Life Cycle Energy Analysis (LCEA), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Techno-economic Assessment (TEA). Results indicated that the LPG cook-stove with PRB is a better choice for the replacement of conventional LPG stove due to its economic and environmental superiority. At 5 kW input power, the PRB based LPG stove with 38.3% Life Cycle Energy Efficiency (LCEE), yielded annual saving of INR 42,157 in comparison with a conventional LPG stove of same capacity. Further, it was found that the annual saving has increased to INR 72,916 for 10 kW input power with 36.7% LCEE. The calculated payback period of the LPG stove with PRB has been found to be less than a week, which is very small considering the life of the cook-stove (10 years). The cumulative present worth of annual savings over the life of the PRB cook-stove has been estimated for 5–10 kW input power, and found INR 3,44,991 and INR 5,96,708 at 5 and 10 kW, respectively, which are much higher than the capital cost of the PRB cook-stove (INR 700).