Abstract
The present study aims at evaluating the performance of the stoves used in the silk-reeling industry for the
cocoon-cooking operation, in order to identify bottlenecks in achieving higher fuel eciency and the ways and
means to overcome these. The paper describes in detail the present process and stoves used in the silk-reeling
industry, the ®ndings of the survey of 236 cooking ovens in the ®eld giving the present energy-use pattern. The
details of energy and water balancing experiments, carried out for evaluating stove performance and to identify
various heat and water streams to arrive at the useful heat required for the present cocoon-cooking process, are also
given, along with possible energy-saving potentials. The results show that the useful energy required for the present
cooking technique/practice is about 5440 and 3660 kJ/kg cocoon for cooking in the charka and the cottage basin
oven, respectively. 7 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.