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Gas stoves aren't really that fast - even standard electric is faster!

youtube.com/watch?v=eUywI8YGy0

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@sjw You mean like they duty cycle instead of lower output?

@matrix @matrix that's exactly what electrical stoves do.
It makes some forms of cooking (like getting a reliable sear without burning) nearly impossible.

@sjw I think that's more related to the thermal inertia instead of the cycling but I guess so

@matrix @matrix yes and also no.
It's way harder to make fine adjustments to heat even if you have good pans

@sjw Yeah, but that's because your adjustments are delayed so you basically have to predict them

@sjw Obviously also depends on the stove how fine the controls actually are

@sjw The large inertia also isn't a problem on induction cooktops

@matrix @sjw professional chefs use gas ranges for a reason, and why chemists use bunsen burners still. Electic is fine for some things and not fine for others.

@sjw I don't think that has much consequence though

@matrix @matrix see this post
https://bae.st/notice/ASByjfGfq2gD35hY6i

If you're just trying to boil or cook something then no but if you try to do anything above the basics (e.g. a good steak) it's nearly impossible. Especially if you don't have really high quality pans.
@sjw @matrix This is a point that so many people miss, I think because they've never really cooked anything.

I also don't really understand this guy's results. I've cooked on both electric and gas stoves, and switching between them takes a bit of an adjustment, the biggest is that gas really does seem to get things hotter faster. I never "timed it" but I certainly experienced a lot of accidents, things over boiling way before I expected it to (with electric I tend to set it at HI because anything else is too slow. With gas that's a mistake). What I wonder is if gas is not necessarily heating faster, but that it can reach higher temperatures than electric can, giving the false impression it's faster?

I also just don't trust this guy. He has a video on home humidifies that is factually accurate up to a point, but when I performed my owns tests I found him to be far from the truth. He certainly seems to be a person that believes whatever someone in authority tells him to think.
@matrix @sjw Yeah, I'm aware of that too, but that's not what I'm talking about.

@Elliptica @sjw He is a bit.
I dunno why you have different experience. When you tried electric, was it a portable one or a regular cooktop? The portable ones are weaker in US because 120V. Maybe you have an older "less ecological" stove.

@matrix @matrix @Elliptica That kind of depends. What is the amperage rating of the outlets in Europe?
@matrix @sjw I’ve owned a proper gas stove two times, and I’ve owned 4 different electric stoves (my parents and myself have moved around a lot). All of the stoves were ranges (oven+stove), so the electric ranges should have been drawing 220V. At the very least, my current one is. In my experience, gas was always faster.

Actually, since I’m a complete autist, I performed the experiment myself.

I used the same pot, filled with exactly 2 cups of water at roughly the same starting temp and measured the central temperature of the water (not touching the sides of the pot) using a Lavatools Javelin meat thermometer. The electric oven is a Frigidaire FCRE3052AS purchased November 2022. The gas stove is a Coleman Two Burner Stove with a claimed max output of 20,000 BTU (assuming 10K BTU per burner, so about 10.5 MJ = 2.9 kWh), also purchased in November 2022. I then boiled water in 4 separate instances at medium and HI, allowing the cooking surfaces to cool completely between tests.

The Coleman is intended for camping and doesn’t have precise markings making it difficult to say what was or wasn’t HI or Medium settings. So possibly this is one flaw in my experiment since I obviously don’t also have a proper gas range on hand. Still, by guessing the flame size between settings, I was able to mark off what I considered Hi (the point when the flame from the oven didn’t grow larger), and medium (the middle point between Hi and flameout).

The other is that it’s propane and not natural gas, which he probably used. Allegedly propane releases 2.5 times the energy per the same amount of natural gas, though I have no way of verifying that experimentally myself at the moment.

Lastly, my current altitude is around 4500ft above sea level, so the boiling point for me is ~203°F (95°C).

My results were that the propane boiled the water noticeably faster with an approximate four minute difference between ‘medium’ settings, and an approximate 2 minutes difference between ‘HI’ settings. But, possibly all I proved is that propane is better than electric, and I really wish I had a way to safely hook my cooking stove to the gas line that I do have in my kitchen.

Based off my measurements, the propane stove imparted 14,000J of energy to the water per second. Meanwhile, the electric stove imparted 860J per second. If I apply the 2.5 efficiency rule for propane to natural gas, it seems the Colman would have imparted only 540J per second, about 35% less energy than the electric stove. Maybe this proves that he was right, but it didn’t seem like he took 35% longer to boil water in his video (I’d have to watch it again, but it seemed like a difference of mere seconds if anything). So there may be something more complex going on here.
@Twoinchdestroya @matrix @sjw I've been sick last few days and very bored, of course I did the math.

@Elliptica @sjw
Yeah I think that proves him. I can't figure out where exactly the 2.5x comes from however it makes sense because natural gas can't be compressed as much as propane, so the energy per volume is smaller.
With electric there could be a difference on "cold start" because the surface itself might have a different thermal mass. Also did you use the "quick boil" 3kW burner or the smaller ones on the electric stove?

@matrix @sjw I had a hard time finding a better source on this, since propane comes in a liquid form while natural gas is... a gas. As such, propane tends to be measured in gallons/ Liters, while Natural Gas (Methane) is measured in cubic feet/meters at STP.

Anyway, it's claimed that Propane burns half the fuel in the same time as Methane. When I look at temperatures of Propane vs Methane flames, they both burn at the same temperature (around 3500°F). They also have the same ignition temperature (400°F). So so long as the stove gets an appropriate amount of fuel, Methane and Propane will probably get things hotter quicker than electric stoves, which reaches around 932°F to 1112°F.

Another way of looking at it, the energy densities between Natural Gas (Methane) and Propane are not the same. A value that I see again and again is that Natural Gas has about 1000 Btu/ft³, while Propane is 2500 Btu/ft³. Hence 2.5 times the energy.

What effect this has exactly somewhat confuses me. Obviously it means Propane releases more energy for the same amount of fuel. So a gas stove running on Methane might need to be on a higher setting to increase the amount of that reaches the burner so it releases the same amount of energy as Propane. Possibly this means that at a given setting, say at HI, Methane releases more energy than Propane and so will be hotter. But it could also be complicated if the stove knows to modulate the flow rate of different fuels. Since houses and gas stoves can be attached to both propane and Methane lines, it's possibly that this is already taken into account somehow. Then, even though Propane is obviously more efficient, both stoves can still release the same amount of energy at a given setting, and so electric stoves would still lose.

I use the small ones. Quick Boil pad? yeah that's a lie. I tried to use it at first actually, but it couldn't bring my small .9L pot to boil after 5 minutes when set to Medium (in fact it seemed to have stalled). At HI it still took it 3 minutes to go from 105°F to full boil, which was the same as the smaller pads at HI. Maybe it's intended for larger pots, but the manual for the range doesn't actually say what's so special about it when compared to the others, beyond the "3,000W element".

Doing a cold starting the electric stove might be an issue, but then it really complicate the entire problem of what's a fair test between systems. But looking at the graph, I also see that the slopes of the electric stoves are lower than for the gas. Even if I had a starting line of 100°F, electric would still lose to the Propane stove at Medium, and at HI electric ties with Propane when set at medium.
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