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Barilla passive cooker

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Re: Barilla passive cooker

#401

Post by Someone »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #2

Backpackers have been using this technique to save fuel - I've got a cozy for my cookpot. I also remember seeing this on one of the Victorian Farm shows - it was something like a pot roast brought to a boil in the morning, then put in a well insulated container to sit for the day. Edit: Whoa, I just clicked through to "The Product" section, and it's an open source design using an Arduino. Super cool!

> it was something like a pot roast brought to a boil in the morning, then put in a well insulated container to sit for the day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haybox: “A haybox, straw box, fireless cooker, insulation cooker, wonder oven, self-cooking apparatus, norwegian cooker or retained-heat cooker is a cooker that utilizes the heat of the food being cooked to complete the cooking process. Food items to be cooked are heated to boiling point, and then insulated. Over a period of time, the food items cook by the heat captured in the insulated container. Generally, it takes three times the normal cooking time to cook food in a haybox.”

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#402

Post by zwirbl »

heisenbit wrote: post #372
modriano wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What efficiency (in terms of energy transfer to the intended material vs to the environment) is observed with gas? IIRC, gas achieves maybe 35-50% efficiency (depending on the surface area and material of the pan) compared with ~80% for electric resistance heating and >90% for induction. Adam Ragusea did a water boiling comparison and the gas stove was dumping so much energy into the air around the pot that his therm…

Comparing gas with electrical efficiency is not representing realistic end-to-end efficiencies wrt. co2 as long as the vas majority of electricity is generated from primary energy. Power plants tend to have efficiencies lower 50%.

The gas end-to-end "efficiency" will not improve drastically ever, while for an electrical stove it is tied to energy production. Arguing with end-to-end efficiencies and power plants is misleading, as I can power my induction stove from my solar panels

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#403

Post by rasengan0 »

Save water and the planet

Perfect passive cooking works, years tested: 500g of pasta + 1-1.2 L of water cooked in a pressure cooker under high setting for 2 mins with natural release. (edit: setup is defunct Fagor + induction cooker)

It's just that simple and no water to discard except through GI tracts.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#404

Post by kergonath »

p1necone wrote: post #169
sltkr wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is about three times as energy-efficient as a gas hob. I sincerely doubt this figure in cases where electricity is generated from fossil fuels in the first place. For example, I lived in the Netherlands where 80% of electricity is still produced by fossil fuels, mostly in gas-fired power plants. As I understand it, generating electricity from gas has an efficiency of only about 50%. That means you lose a lot o…

I imagine part of the efficiency of electric kettles is due to the heating element actually being submerged in the water, or at least directly adjacent to it. Compare to a stovetop where there's a big heavy pot between the element and the water, and it's not in complete contact with it. Also often the heating element is underneath a piece of glass.

> Compare to a stovetop where there's a big heavy pot between the element and the water, and it's not in complete contact with it.

You’re describing resistive stovetops, not induction ones where the heating element is the bottom of the pot itself.

> Also often the heating element is underneath a piece of glass.

These things under the glass do not heat anything. They are there to induce some electric current in the bottom of the pan you put on top, which actually does the heating.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#405

Post by kergonath »

eru wrote: post #275
ErikCorry wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's calcium. It won't hurt you, and you can't taste it.

You can definitely taste it. If you care about energy efficiency, you should descale your kettles every so often.

> You can definitely taste it.

If it gets deposited, it means that it’s not in the water any longer, or at least the concentration in the water has lowered. What you can taste is already in the water before you boil it and does not come from the kettle (well, in kettles that have been used normally with normal water).

If it bothers you, just boiling a bit of slightly diluted vinegar will get rid of it.

> If you care about energy efficiency, you should descale your kettles every so often.

Yes, these are terrible at conducting heat.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#406

Post by Moru »

stephen_g wrote: post #325
sltkr wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is about three times as energy-efficient as a gas hob. I sincerely doubt this figure in cases where electricity is generated from fossil fuels in the first place. For example, I lived in the Netherlands where 80% of electricity is still produced by fossil fuels, mostly in gas-fired power plants. As I understand it, generating electricity from gas has an efficiency of only about 50%. That means you lose a lot o…

The kettle might come out around the same for particularly dirty grids, but my understanding is that induction stoves are efficient enough (and gas stoves so poor efficiency) that it's basically always better CO₂-wise to use the induction hob. Your assumption that "the cost of transportation is approximately equal for gas and electricity" is probably not accurate, given that while the infrastructure costs are probabl…

And the gas pipes looses gas in transmission which does a lot more damage to the environment than lost electricity.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#407

Post by krautsourced »

I might just be getting old and cranky, but I get the feeling we're re-inventing common sense, but replace sense with technology. Can I get an app that tells me to stop letting the water run while I brush my teeth as well?

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#408

Post by shepherdjerred »

modeopfer wrote: post #391
shepherdjerred wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the perfect word for it! On one hand small actions can lead to big change. On the other hand, no matter how many small actions are taken, this problem isn't going to be solved with government intervention.

Is that a typo? I feel that this problem isn't going to be solved _without_ government intervention. Large groups of people have an unbelievably high inertia. But yeah, forbidding restaurants to distribute drinking water is probably not the right move.

Yup that's a typo hah.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#409

Post by Moru »

nephanth wrote: post #359
eru wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely taste it. If you care about energy efficiency, you should descale your kettles every so often.

It's not even hard, just boil a solution of 1/2 white vinegar + 1/2 water, and the CaCO3 (+ 2H(+) from the vinegar) changes back to Ca(2+) + CO2 + H2O You can even see the bubbles from the CO2

It's pretty inconvenient when you are in an unknown location on a hotel. But yes, some areas of Europe has very hard water.

Re: Barilla passive cooker

#410

Post by riffraff »

mattmaroon wrote: post #52
riffraff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pasta needs to reach something like 80 degrees to "cook", if you just soak it at 35 it will not be the same result. The method described here (which has been around for centuries) instead gets you the same result as cooking in constantly boiling water, saving a lot of gas/electricity.

I really doubt it’s a lot. I really don’t think it’s much at all, and that’s why they’ve got the asterisk on the number. Water has really high specific heat capacity, and there’s a lot more water than noodles (by mass). You’re using a lot more energy to heat the water than the noodles. Most people switch to low heat (the water just has to stay boiling, how fast doesn’t much matter) at about the same time this would h…

> I really doubt it’s a lot. I really don’t think it’s much at all, and that’s why they’ve got the asterisk on the number.

The asterisk is on the 80% claim, a more conservative estimation from a research published by the italian pasta makers association last summer was at 47%, which I think still qualifies as "a lot".

I think you are under-estimating the amount of power required to keep the water boiling, especially on gas stoves.

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