Performance assessment of an advanced solar concatenated sugarcane juice distiller

Abstract

Non-centrifugal sugar products like khandsari and jaggery retains more nutrients unlike centrifugated sugar products like refined sugar and white sugar. Growing demands of healthier food has boosted the demand for non-centrifugal sugar. However, the small scale non-centrifugal sugar industries remain highly unorganized and relies on environmentally harmful conventional energy resources like bagasse, wood and fossil fuels for obtaining concentrated sugarcane juice. So, in the present study a solar driven advanced concatenated sugarcane juice distiller (ACSJD) was tested for obtaining high total soluble solids (TSS) value in concentrated sugarcane juice as primary output and distilled water as its byproduct. The ACSJD was equipped with reflectors (internal & external), fins, wick material and glass cooling mechanism. The assessment of the ACSJD is carried out on the basis of thermal performance, environmental impact and economic viability which was also parallelly compared with a simple concatenated sugarcane juice distiller (SCSJD). The ACSJD was supplied with raw sugarcane juice (14.2°Brix) at 50 ml/min flow rate. The system was observed to produce concentrated sugarcane juice of 38.2°Brix which is higher than any other solar distiller reported yet. The distillate output of ACSJD is 5.65 kg/day which is 45.0 % higher than the SCSJD. The total internal heat transfer coefficient of ACSJD was 71.25 W/m²°C which was observed to be 73.95 % higher than that of SCSJD. The yearlong energy output of ACSJD was 1188.6 kWh with 44.18 days shorter energy payback time than SCSJD. The ACSJD generated $ 43,165.26 carbon credits, with 62.14 days shorter economic recovery time than SCSJD.