Enhanced heat utilization and fuel saving in a jaggery plant

Abstract

AbstractThe shortage of scientific betterment in jaggery manufacturing processes results in a high fuel consumption and low heat utilization efficiency of conventional jaggery production plants. In the present investigation, a semi‐automatically operated modified jaggery plant (SOMJP) has been designed, fabricated, tested, and analyzed. The modifications include implementation of an automatic bagasse dryer, automatic fuel feeder, and improved pans for preheating and concentrating the sugarcane juice for obtaining jaggery. For comparison purpose, a manually operated conventional jaggery plant (MOCJP) has also been fabricated and analyzed. The SOMJP is observed to have higher overall heat utilization efficiency (80.28%), lower bagasse consumption (1.38 kg/kg of jaggery prepared), lower draft generated (11.03 N/m2) and lesser time taken for jaggery production (21 min) than that of MOCJP. In SOMJP, automatic bagasse dryer utilizing thermal energy of waste hot flue gasses has eliminated the labor and space required for the open sun drying of wet bagasse. This resulted in additional profit year by year to the stakeholders and low payback period of the plant. The SOMJP is also observed to be a highly fuel self‐sustainable plant (+12.69 kg/batch).Practical applicationsMajority of the processes adopted in conventional jaggery plants are manual. The drying and feeding of bagasse in conventional jaggery plants are one of the major processes which need more space and labor, because of which the bagasse supply is non‐uniform, higher, time‐consuming, and involves heavy running cost. These drawbacks can be overcome by implementing automation. The implementation of automatic bagasse dryer and feeder would be very helpful to convert a manually operated conventional jaggery plant (MOCJP) into semi‐automatic operated modified jaggery plant (SOMJP). The initial investments involved for making a SOMJP could be recovered, because the adopted modifications have the potential to reduce the fixed and running costs of the plant. The implementation of automation may also improve the overall performance parameters of existing conventional and modified jaggery plants.