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November 30, 2018
Energy of Ramen: Instant Time Savings
Instant ramen has become so ubiquitous in modern life that it is often considered a staple of any cheap student’s diet. This reputation has even garnered the vote for best invention of the 20th century in Japan, surpassing other modern marvels that one would think would be more important(ASIA-PACIFIC, 2000). The secret to its rapid spread and consumption is often attributed to its convenience, where the consumer can have a meal ready within minutes of reaching for a packet. However, conventional ramen has not taken off to this degree, and this difference results from different manufacturing processes. Although the energy used in manufacturing noodles for instant ramen is comparable to its conventional counterpart, the larger embodied energy resulting from extra processes in instant ramen results in attractive time and energy savings for consumers.
Before either product is cooked, the energy necessary to produce and process the raw noodles used in both instant and regular ramen is very similar, showcasing that differences do not occur until later in the manufacturing process. Both products contain nearly the same raw ingredients (flour, salt, and water) with the difference in shape and texture resulting from manufacturing. Of these ingredients, wheat comprises 95% overall, so its production will be the topic of analysis (Solt 2009). Energy use in agriculture is generally classified as direct, indirect, renewable, or nonrenewable where some uses can be counted for either category resulting in sums not equal to 100%. In a study done by Urmia University, these percentages are 53%, 38%, 30%, and 88% respectively. Direct energy, as it is used, refers to energy inputs such as “labor work, fossil, and electricity” defined as directly being responsible for the production of wheat. This category has a mix of primary and secondary fuels that are either used in their basic forms or are a product of external generation. On the other hand, indirect energy, such as “fertilizers, manures, and pesticides” refer to components with significant embodied energy that are heavily involved in wheat production. Almost all of these are secondary energies and are not found in nature in usable forms. Renewable and nonrenewable energy, as the names suggest, refer to whether the energy source is replenishable at the used rate, where examples of renewables are human labor or manure, while energy sources such as diesel, chemicals, and machinery are considered nonrenewable (Taghavifar 2014). After this wheat is harvested and transported to a processing facility, the next considerable energy usage is in refining it. In factories, dough production takes place in several steps which each involve certain energies. First, the wheat is milled, between heavy rollers, usually driven by electric motors. Thus, the main energy type present is electrical, which is then converted to mechanical through the motor. The resulting product is flour, which is combined with the other ingredients in large kneading machines which likewise mainly use electricity (Bushuk 2012). This breakdown applies to both instant and conventional ramen due to their compositions being virtually identical, and as such embodied energy totals do not differ until a later stage.
Beyond the production of the raw dough, different manufacturing processes differentiate the embodied energy in instant and conventional ramen. In producing conventional ramen, factories are optimized to make straight, uncooked noodles quickly, intended to be cooked at a later time. Comparatively, the purpose of instant ramen’s curved shape is to e