Omkar P Thaval
BMA Braunschweigische Maschinenbauanstalt GmbH, Am Alten Bahnhof 5, 38122 Braunschweig, Germany
The greenfield cane sugar factories built in the last two decades have largely focused on reducing exhaust steam consumption for the process to maximise either power generation for export/allied industries or bagasse savings for value added co-products. The main reason for using falling-film evaporators (FFE) in the evaporator station is energy efficiency. Changes to the sugar house equipment have enabled the use of low-pressure vapours for continuous crystallisation, further reducing process steam consumption. An evaporator station is typically limited to a quintuple (5-effect) or, in rare cases, a sextuple (6-effect) configuration. A higher number of effects, while providing a greater reduction in steam consumption, inevitably increases the overall cost of the project. This paper investigates the impact of different evaporator station configurations on process steam consumption, power generation, bagasse savings, predicted sucrose losses and revenue generation for the factory. Together with the capital costs, engineering costs and installation costs of the equipment for the different configurations, the feasibility of the entire project is evaluated.