Exhaust Heat Recovery and Performance Improvement of Jaggery Making Furnace

Abstract

Jaggery making from the sugarcane is a traditional process which creates local employments and entrepreneurship opportunities. Jaggery making plants are generally small units fabricated by local artisans on the basis of age old expertise without any technical support. Bagasse is used as fuel to boil the sugarcane juice. In traditional single pan jaggery furnace due to incomplete combustion of bagasse energy losses are high resulting into higher fuel consumption and low thermal efficiency of the plant. In order to reduce the losses and cut down the consumption of bagasse, exhaust heat is utilized for preheating of sugarcane juice in pre-heater. The improved plant and the conventional plant are compared on the basis of thermal efficiency and bagasse consumption per Kg jaggery production. Resulted that thermal efficiency is improved from 16.16% to 24.36% and bagasse consumption is reduced by 1.2 Kg per Kg jaggery production.