Cookee - Cook Energy Efficiently

Cookee are a family of cooking appliances that cooks food with significantly less energy consumption. Cookee uses more traditional and safer sources of energy, including direct heat and need not use exotic energy sources like microwaves, although Cookee technology can be adapted fruitfully with microwave cooking as well. Versions of Cookee that uses electricity can operate from solar-PV panels and allow entire cooking energy need to be met, inexpensively.

A traditional dish like "khichadi" (a dish with rice and various daals or lentils) or "biryani" (rice cooked with various meat and spices) for two people may be cooked with 1KW power, applied for only four minutes. For comparison, a standard pressure cooker (Indian) based cooking of the same quantity of food may require about 12-15min. This is about a factor of three to four times less energy consumption as compared to conventional cooking methods, including the versatile pressure cookers.

Assuming electricity cost at Rs.8 per unit (kW-Hr), this amounts to expense of only Rs.0.53 (less than one US cent). So for normal cooking, energy cost per average household per month can be around Rs.100 (less than USD 1.5). This means very significant savings, particularly for the bottom of the economic pyramid, implying large global impact. Many indirect savings, such as less fossil fuel burning or wood burning, for large sections of the population world-wide, may trigger tremendous environmental recovery as well.

Government of India spends nearly Rs.25,000 crores (nearly USD 4 billion) annually for LPG and kerosene subsidies. The country may therefore be spending four times of this, or around Rs.1.0 lakh crores. Cookee usage can cut costs by at least 50-70%. Prototype versions of Cookee takes approximately 25-30%, or less, of energy compared to conventional techniques.

Shown in the adjacent image is an early prototype of Cookee called the Bakee. Bakee are used for baking. This device is able to roast peanuts (100g peanuts kept at 160 deg C) by consuming only around 90 Watts of electricity for approximately 15-18 minutes. Temperatures inside the hot zone can reach 240 deg C with less than 200W power. The Bakee could also roast peanuts with a mere 50W of input power (of course for a longer time now, and temperatures reached just in excess of 130 deg C). 

Cookee can also use solar and alternate energy (heat, electricity, etc). Cookee is also scale-able and can be adapted for community cooking applications. Cooking with less energy is equally important for various emergency and relief operations. Keeping in mind, the potential impact that Cookee promises to bring about, various intellectual property rights are being secured. Patents and PCT have been applied for in India and internationally.

Cookee uses various energy efficient techniques to achieve its goal. Losses from conduction, convection and radiation, prevalent in conventional cooking methods, have been analyzed and largely arrested. Furthermore, energy losses through mass transfer and phase changes are also minimized in Cookee.

The core ideas have been borrowed from an earlier work on creating desktop versions of energy efficient metal melting furnaces. These are commercially sold now with trade name of Desktop Foundry / Melt-IT.  A kilogram of metal like aluminum, copper, silver, brass, gold, etc, can be melted inside a coffee-maker-sized machine, but by obtaining relatively meager power from a single phase mains (5A socket). Melt-IT had won first prize at the prestigious event, IMTEX 2014, where nearly 25 countries participated with total of nearly 500 stalls.

Cookee applies techniques similar to that of Melt-IT (Desktop Foundry) for cooking food, energy efficiently.  Reduction of losses have been the central idea, along with efficient coupling of energy and smart control processes.  These have manifested in many different ways within the Cookee products.

Above: various cakes baked in Bakee.

The images above shows simple coffee-cakes baked using Cookee technologies consuming less than 1/6th of the energy required as compared to any normal baking in conventional ovens. In this particular Cookee, we used an average of 150-200W of power for around 35-40 min of baking. Preparation time was an additional 10 min per cake. This could be a big fillip to the baking industry. Even in off-grid locations, for street-food vendors or in remote rural areas, baking can be made possible by using energy from solar-PV panels (since Cookee / Bakee are sufficiently energy efficient).

Similarly, one could bake pizzas, bread, buns, muffins, puffs, etc. One could also bake potatoes, or roast egg-plant (to make 'baigan bharta' for example), etc in Bakee. Various European and continental dishes like lasagna, pasta, etc. may also be cooked in Bakee / Cookee. In an increasingly globalized world, the demand for international cuisine, right from the comfort of one's home may not be a distant reality.

The process of operation is largely automated, and operated from smart user interfaces available through smart-phones / Android devices. Cooking can be not only energy efficient, but also take away the drudgery of spending long times in the kitchen.

The adjacent image shows pizza baked in a Bakee. A particularly delicious crust is shown, and the entire result is very gastronomically exciting.  Cookee / Bakee hopes to bring the luxury of smart and energy-efficient cooking to homes, institutions, street-food, restaurants and industries, globally.