Pinch Analysis of Sugarcane Refinery Water Integration

Abstract

Water is one of the key resources for the normal life and is used extensively in many industries. The sugar industry is one of the largest water users and producers in food processing sector. This paper presents the analysis of freshwater used and wastewater discharged in a sugar manufacturing process. Also, this paper presents an analysis of cooling water system. The part of the barometric condenser, mill turbine and electric power turbine units were chosen for analysis and synthesis of cooling water systems. In order to reduce the load of the cooling water system, the system was modified to an open recirculation cooling water system. The analysis used water pinch analysis method and mathematical optimization techniques by resource conservation networks spreadsheet software. Analysis of sugarcane hot water balance shows that the water content of sugarcane itself is more than sufficient for internal processing. Analysis of the excess condensate internal water and the discharged water from cooling water system showed that the quantity of freshwater used for cooling system requirement is 121 t/h and the wastewater generation is 24.93 t/h when using BOD as a contaminant.