Sugar Tech (July-Sept 2011) 13(3):179185 DOI 10.

1007/s12355-011-0092-2

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Assessment of Standby Evaporator as an Energy Conservation Measure: Case of Sudanese Sugar Industry
Mahdi Bashir Bashir M. Elhassan Ali A. Rabah

Received: 24 May 2011 / Accepted: 2 August 2011 / Published online: 25 August 2011 Society for Sugar Research & Promotion 2011

Abstract This work presents analysis of historical data of four Sudanese sugar factories namely Assalaya, Sennar, Gunned and New Halfa. The historical data covers more than 40 years (19662010). In about 38 years (19662004) of this period the sugar industry operates with one set of evaporator. In 2005 a standby set of evaporator is installed in each factory. The installed set of evaporator is similar in conguration (Robert type) to existing set however, with a relatively large heat transfer area and made of stainless steel rather than brass. The result of the analysis revealed that before 2004 the total downtime is 26.6% (53 days) of the operation period on average; 10.4 days (19.6%) of which is for evaporator scale removal. The provision of standby evaporator has completely eliminated the evaporator downtime. The improvement in total downtime has made signicant saving on bagasse. The bagasse saved in 10 days is 14379 ton ($215691 based on bagasse price $15/ ton). The shortening of crop season made by standby evaporator has saved the sugar cane from over maturation and improved sugar recovery by 0.2% (from 9.3 to 9.5%). The savings due to bagasse and sugar recovery only made the evaporator payback period of 2.8 years. The standby evaporator has also improved the overall steam economy and evaporation coefcient. The steam economy of the standby and existing sets of evaporators is about 3.1 and 2.6 respectively. Keywords Sudan sugar industry Downtime Standby evaporator

Introduction In the past energy was not of concern in the sugar industry. In fact the design of the process equipment gave very little consideration for efcient use of energy and therefore consumption of more energymore bagassehelped reduce cost of safe storage bagasse. With more utilization opportunity for bagasse coming up for examples bulb and paper, ber board and electricity generation, the energy conservation in sugar industry is receiving increasing interest. The reduction of energy consumption in sugar production usually includes improvement in those energy systems comprising power plants, millings, multiple-effect evaporator and process heating equipment. Over years many energy conservation systems have been developed in sugar industry. These include retrot of existing systems, cogeneration, bagasse drying and total electrication to mention a few. In the sugar factory Hohenau, Austria, a four-effect evaporator station, originally comprising four naturalcirculation units and a tubular falling lm unit, was reconstructed. The natural-circulation units were removed and replaced by four plate-type falling lm units. Another new unit of the same type was installed on a new support structure. The reconstructed station is arranged in six effect including two pre-evaporation ones. The retrot of the evaporator station and heat exchanger network resulted in a reduction of the specic energy consumption by 17% (Urbaniec 2004). Another example of evaporator retrot is the case for sugar factory Krasnystaw, Poland. The retrot resulted in the reduction of energy consumption by 29% (Urbaniec et al. 1997). A third example of evaporator ret rot is the case of sugar factory Sajkaska located in Zabalj in the Republic of Serbia. The multi-effect evaporator

M. Bashir B. M. Elhassan A. A. Rabah (&) Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Khartoum, P.O. Box 321, Khartoum, Sudan e-mail: rabahss@hotmail.com

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station was modernized by replacing old Robert evaporators with falling lm plate evaporators (GEA-Ecoex). In this way, the energy consumption in the Sajkaska sugar factory was reduced by about 20% in comparison with the previous consumption (Prodanic et al. 2008). Cogeneration is the combined production of heat and power (CHP) from bagasse. International Sugar Organization (2009) provided a survey on the status of cogeneration on sugar cane processing sectors. It shows that bagasse-based production of electricity for export to the national grid is fast becoming a major activity of sugar mills. It indicated an increasing number of mills in a growing number of countries are already involved or are planning to start in the near future electricity production in excess of captive consumption. A review of the current situation and prospects for cogeneration in 13 countries in Africa (South Africa, Kenya), Asia (India), Latin America (Brazil and Guatemala,) and Oceania (Mauritius) shows that the scope for efcient, competitive and environmentally friendly electricity production could be sizeable. Sudan has installed a 15 MW cogeneration plant in Assalaya sugar factory in White Nile state. Other congregation plants are planned for sugar factories at Sennar, Gunned and New Halfa (personal communication). In sugar industry mill rolls, centrifugals, air pumps and compressors, pumps, conveyors and elevators, etc are steam turbine prime movers. A change from steam turbines to electric motors as prime movers is often regarded as an important step in sugar industry. Ramjatun et al. (1999) has listed the advantage of electric motors as 1. 2. More steam is directed to the new power house where it is used more efciently, The long and cumbersome steam pipelines are removed and replaced by the very much smaller electric cables, The reliability of the system is increased, Less oor space is occupied, Maintenance cost is reduced, Individual electric motors allow automatic control, Improves reliability, cleanliness, and exibility of plant.

1977 and Kenana in 1975. The former four factories are owned by Sudanese Sugar Company (SSC) and the later is owned by Kenana Sugar Company. There are other three factories under construction. These are White Nile, Blue Nile and Deuem sugar factories. The former is expected to be commissioned in 2012. Figure 1 shows the sugar production in the period 19632010. The total production jumps form 500000 ton in year 2000 to more than 750000 in the year 2010. Besides sugar production the production of ethanol is now introduced in Kenana and under construction in other factories.

Case Study The study investigates the Sudanese Sugar factories with special emphasis on Sennar sugar factory. Sennar factory is located along the Blue Nile about 400 km south of Khartoum. Both the existing and new (standby) sets of evaporators are forward quadruple effect of Robert type. The material of construction of the existing set and standby are brass and stainless steel respectively. The standby set is commissioned in 2004. The total cost of standby evaporator including installation cost is $1502059.00. Table 1 shows the heat transfer area of the two sets of evaporators.

800
Gunied N.Halfa Sennar Assalaya Kenana Total

600

Ton (000)

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

400

Two examples of electrication are available in the literature. Natal sugar, South Africa has electried the auxiliary motors and Cuba has electried 5 plants out of 15 plants. Sennar sugar factory, Sudan has installed 3 MW cane preparation electric driven mill. The energy saving was estimated as 10%. Sugar Industry in Sudan Sudan has ve sugar factories namely Gunied founded in 1963, New Halfa in 1966, Assalaya in 1980, Sennar in

200

0 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Season

Fig. 1 Sudan sugar production (19632010)

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Sugar Tech (July-Sept 2011) 13(3):179185 Table 1 Heat transfer area of evaporators Evaporators Heat transfer area (m ) I Standby Existing set 2600 2400 II 2000 1900 III 2000 1700 IV 2000 1700
2

181

2.

systems or inadequate cane cutting laborers. The no-cane-downtime varies from less than one percent (in 1977) to more than 20% (in 1996). Factory (referred to as technical downtime): This is divided further into two types of downtimes as planed downtime and preventive maintenance. a. Planned downed: This is the time required for scale removal of evaporators. Table 3 shows the downtime for scale removal. It can be seen that the scale cleaning downtime is 226 h (9.4 days) or 12 % of the total downtime on average. b. Preventive maintenance downtime: This is due to equipment breakdown such as cane mills, pumps, air compressors and conveyors among other. By subtraction of planned downtime, the preventive downtime in the year 19992000 is about 18% of the total downtime.

Results and Discussion Downtime Before the Standby Evaporator (19762004) Figure 2 shows the total downtime of the four Sudanese sugar factories. There is no signicant difference between the downtime of the four factories. It can also be observed that the downtime assumes a decreasing trend in general. Hence the downtime of Sennar sugar factory will be considered for further discussion. Table 2 shows the operation time and downtime in Sennar sugar factory for the period from 1976 to 2004. This covers the period before the installation of the standby set of evaporator. It can be seen that, in the period 19762004, the operation time which usually extend from November to May, varies between 155 and 264 days with an average of 199 days. It can also be seen that the total downtime in the period from 1976 to 2004 varies between 65.03% in 1976/77 season to 24.12% in the 2000/2001 season. The average downtime is 39.37%, which is equivalent to 78.3 days. The downtime is generally attributed to 1. Field (referred to as no cane downtime): This may be due to machinery failure of cane or transportation
80
Gunied Halfa Sennar Assalaya

The downtime has signicant impact on overall performance of both factory and eld. The main impacts of downtime include: Drop in sugar recovery: The compensation of downtime will prolong the crop season and bush it to hot summer days. Long crop season means sugar cane over maturation or in other words loss of sucrose. Figure 3 shows the sugar recovery of the four sugar factories. It can also be seen that there is no signicant variation in sugar recovery among the four sugar factories. For Sennar the sugar recovery before the installation of the standby evaporator is about 9.3% on average and after the installation of the standby evaporator is about 9.5%; an enhancement of 0.2%. The poor sugar recovery is attributed to over maturation of sugar cane. 2. Consumption of bagasse: During downtime the plant is normally not completely down; in particular the power house is running to provide electricity for irrigation, residential area and administrative building and steam for service. The shortage of bagasse normally forces the plant either to run the boiler on furnace oil or buy electricity from national grid. 3. Evaporator efciency: In hot summer days the efciency of the evaporator will go down due to the increase in the temperature of cooling water in the vacuum condenser of the last effect. There are a number of measures that are recommended to reduce the downtime. These include 1. Strict implementation of proper maintenance programs for machinery and harvesters as well as for process equipment and ancillaries. Supply of adequate number of eld machinery e.g. harvesters, laborers and tractors 1.

60

Downtime %

40

20

0 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Year
Fig. 2 Total downtime in sugar factories

2.

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182 Table 2 Operation and downtime in Sennar sugar factory (19762004) Season Year 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Average 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Days 212.00 183.00 100.00 171.00 184.00 185.00 182.00 221.00 220.00 237.00 264.00 229.00 228.00 156.00 168.00 211.00 231.00 226.00 232.00 182.00 177.00 160.00 230.00 190.00 155.50 193.50 217.00 238.70 199.42 Cane Crushed 376957.00 408240.00 232879.00 401770.00 338156.00 313790.00 463758.00 702830.00 760924.00 498047.00 646372.00 573415.00 536004.00 553396.00 626503.00 631881.00 594920.00 528766.30 519176.47 545889.87 47161.27 508033.93 715580.74 734374.45 663482.49 802022.68 928325.54 893696.09 Sugar Production 26465.00 31675.00 18177.00 30001.20 26115.00 22326.40 40601.00 57710.00 68884.90 37623.00 47199.90 44157.00 44115.00 50660.00 58788.80 55565.00 52539.10 41835.10 42244.40 44650.00 36000.00 43009.20 55063.80 64522.80 62205.90 78186.50 85021.00 78692.00

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Down time (%) Tech 64.39 28.00 20.20 23.34 32.23 27.04 28.77 33.54 29.70 35.24 42.53 45.68 33.58 30.75 32.00 30.75 31.40 39.89 41.47 27.97 30.99 24.44 35.90 24.05 12.70 18.02 23.18 27.30 31.25 No cane 0.64 9.25 0.91 14.31 13.15 16.87 4.13 2.28 1.94 20.98 11.82 4.19 15.79 1.79 1.49 7.94 14.13 9.12 7.40 10.05 13.35 13.00 1.42 6.28 11.42 7.52 2.16 3.90 8.12 Total 65.03 37.25 21.11 37.65 45.38 43.91 32.90 35.82 31.64 56.22 54.35 49.87 49.37 32.54 33.49 38.69 45.53 49.01 48.87 38.02 44.34 37.44 37.32 30.33 24.12 25.54 25.34 31.20 39.37

Furnace oil Consumption 6242.00 5920.00 926.00 2138.50 1875.00 2229.50 1907.00 3360.50 1514.50 1602.00 3461.00 3649.00 3741.50 909.00 804.50 648.50 3217.50 1802.00 2238.50 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Table 3 Operation period between two successive cleaning and downtime No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Total Date of scale removal 13 December 1999 3 January 2000 22 January 2000 7 February 2000 25 February 2000 13 March 2000 31 March 2000 16 April 2000 7 May 2000 Downtime (h) 18 26 26 26 24 23 26 31 26 226 21 19 18 18 18 16 16 21 147 Operation time (day)

Training of machinery operators Scale or fouling control. Installation of a second set of evaporator which completely eliminate factory stoppage for evaporator cleaning. The rst three measures are in fact implemented by the factory since crop season of 20002001. As a result, it can be seen that there is a substantial reduction in the total downtime in the period 20012004; the total down is 26% on average. Table 4 shows the analysis of specimen of scale removed from the evaporator. The result indicates that Ca2? constitutes the main element of the scale; its concentration is 550 ppm. Besides Ca2?, the Mg2? and Na1? are presented with significant amount. The Ca2? and Mg2? can be attributed mainly to

3. 4. 5.

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15

183

10

5 Gunied Halfa Sennar Assalaya 0 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

In other industry scale is commonly controlled using chemicals, however, this option is not likely in food industry. The other options include the reduction of Ca, Mg, Na and other salts in imbibition water and minimization of mud in cane and enhancement of the juice clarication efciency. The reduction of these salts in imbibition water may be made by treating the imbibition water before utilization. Alternative option is to use condensate driven off the evaporators. Minimizing of mud may require harvesting and cane preparation systems. Reduction of salt by increasing the clarier efciency may represent the most viable and economical option. To enhance the clarier efciency the most important parameters to control are temperature and pH. Downtime After the Standby Evaporator (20052010)

Sugar Recovery %

Year
Fig. 3 Sugar recovery

Table 4 Properties and composition of evaporator scale Property Sample number 1 pH EC TOC OM N P K Ca Mg Na Mn Fe Cu Zn Ni Pb 9.52 1.13 3.04 5.38 0.05 0.84 1.57 546.2 9.34 21.44 1.72 \DL 9.56 4.64 0.16 \DL 2 9.38 1.29 1.44 2.55 0.05 0.78 1.55 541.4 9.15 12.49 0.94 \DL 5.39 9.31 0.02 \DL 3 11.95 4.67 2.56 3.41 0.04 0.82 1.98 614.2 7.49 12.03 \DL \DL 3.89 2.54 \DL \DL 4 12.08 6.38 2.48 4.39 0.03 3.28 1.08 605.7 3.69 11.66 \DL \DL \DL 0.66 \DL \DL 5 9.52 8.16 1.62 2.87 0.03 0.96 1.19 599.1 2.47 19.53 \DL \DL \DL 0.67 \DL \DL S/cm % % % % ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm ppm Unit

Table 5 shows the downtime of Sennar sugar factory for the period 20052010 when the standby evaporator was installed and fully commissioned. It is clear that the downtime has been reduced signicantly from the year 2005 on; it varies from 20.2 to 10.6% with an average of 14.6%. The downtime to evaporator cleaning is completely eliminated. The remaining downtime is due to no cane and preventive maintenance. It can also be seen that the no cane downtime is also signicantly reduced. This is due to the supply of adequate number of eld machineries such as harvesters, transportation and loading systems. Potential Savings Table 6 shows the production data averaged for each decade of operation before and after the installation of the standby evaporator. The comparison will be made between the last period before the installation (20002004) and the period after the installation (20052010) of the standby evaporator. It can be seen that even before the installation of the standby evaporator, the no cane downtime has already improved signicantly. This is due to the implemented measures indicated early such as provision of harvesters and maintenance programs. After the installation it can be seen that the improvement is signicant in the technical downtime. The no cane down remained almost constant. The technical downtime is reduced from 20.3% (20002004) to 9.5%. The standby evaporator has substantial impacts on the crop period; it is cut by 15 % (30 days). Accordingly the sugar recovery is improved by 0.2% (from 9.3% to 9.5%) or enhancement by 2.4%. Table 7 shows the bagasse and sugar saved due to improvement in the technical downtime. The bagasse saved in 10 days (downtime used to clean the evaporator) is 14379.4 ton. The sugar savings due to recovery improvement is 6361.2 ton/season. The lowest price of $15/ton

pH is measured in 1:5 ratio, EC in mg/cm TOC total organic carbon, OM organic matter, \DL below detection limit

1. 2. 3.

The soil and mud associated with sugar cane The imbibition water is untreated water (raw water) Chemical used in juice clarications and pH control. Lime is used in this particular factory

The Na1? is mainly stem from the fertilizer used in the sugar cane eld.

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184 Table 5 Operation and downtime after the installation of new set of evaporator Season Year 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Average 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Day 182.00 184.00 175.33 164.67 168.50 151.25 170.96 Cane Crushed (910 ton) 835.4 894.2 941.3 871.4 894.6 768.7
3

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Sugar Production (910 ton) 72.4 80.6 92.0 85.5 87.1 76.6
3

Down time (%) Tech 19.24 13.50 6.80 7.26 5.91 4.52 9.54 No cane 0.93 3.70 4.87 5.55 4.71 10.75 5.09 Total 20.17 17.20 11.67 12.81 10.62 15.27 14.62

Furnace oil (ton)

14.00 256.00 160.00 0 0 0

Table 6 Production data in Sudanese Sugar Factory (19762010) Seasons Year 1976 1981 1991 2001 2005 % 1980 1990 2000 2004 2010 Days 170.0 209.0 204.3 201.2 171.0 30.2 15.0 Cane Crushed (9103 ton/year) 351.6 567.5 536.2 821.9 867.6 457.1 5.6 Bagasse (ton/day) Sugar Production (9103 ton) 26.5 47.2 48.4 76.0 82.4 0.3 23.7 Recovery (%) 7.6 8.3 8.3 9.3 9.5 0.2 2.4 Down time (%) Tech (%) 33.6 33.9 31.9 20.3 9.5 -10.8 -53.0 No cane (%) 7.7 8.1 9.2 6.3 5.1 -1.2 -18.6 Total (%) 41.3 42.0 41.1 26.6 14.6 -11.9 -44.9

736.8 964.8 916.4 1437.9 1779.3 341.3 23.7

Enhancement

Table 7 Bagasse and sugar savings Item Bagasse Sugar Ton per year 14379.4 6361.2 Price ($/ton) 15 50 Dollar savings 215691 318059 533750 1502059 2.81

in operation the other set is in scale cleaning. Secondly the operation time before cleaning is reduced to 512 days by each set instead of the old practice of 1621 days. The
80

Total dollar savings Capital cost of evaporator ($) Payback period (year)

60

20

Steam Consumption
Brix in

The operation period between successive cleaning of evaporator is already shown in Table 3. It can be seen that before the installation of the standby evaporator the operation period between two successive cleaning times extend from 16 to 21 days. Figure 4 shows the operation period after the installation of the standby set of evaporators. First the cleaning downtime is completely eliminated; as one set

Standby

bagasse is considered. The prot in sugar is taken as $50/ton (direct communication with SSC). The cost of the evaporator including capital and installation cost for the base year 2003 is $1502059 (Personnel communication with SSC). The total saving (bagasse ? sugar recovery) yields a payback period of 2.8 year. As a simple indicator this payback period is economically feasible.

Brix

Old Set

Old Set

Brix out 0

10

15

20

25

Standby
30

40

Operation (Day)
Fig. 4 Operation time after the installation of standby evaporator (15 January to 14 February 2011)

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Sugar Tech (July-Sept 2011) 13(3):179185 Table 8 Operation data of quadruple effect evaporator (runs 1 and of standby and 3 and 4 of existing evaporator) Run no. Feed I Calandria F (t/h) 1 2 3 4 130 170 131 125 T (C) 120 120 120 120 Brix 20.3 20.7 17.9 19.3 P (kg/cm2) 0.57 0.75 0.74 0.60 T (C) 113 116 116 113 Body P (kg/cm2) 0.27 0.33 0.30 0.23 T (C) 106 108 107 106 Bx Out 24.8 27.8 27.8 25.1 IV Body VAC (cm Hg) 56.8 58.3 57.0 54.0 T (C) 65.2 63.4 65.0 68.3

185

Bx Out 57.2 62.7 62.8 60.8

Table 9 Evaporator performance parameters Evap. Standby Existing Run no. 1 2 3 4 V1 (ton/h) 23.7 43.3 46.7 29.0 Vt (ton/h) 84.2 113.7 93.5 85.6 ks (kJ/kg) 2223.3 2214.1 2214.6 2221.8 k1 (kJ/kg) 2240.6 2236.9 2238.7 2243.1 FCp(Tf - T1) (kJ/h) 7245.2 8485.2 6893.7 7443.0 Ms (ton/h) 27.1 47.6 50.4 32.6 E 3.1 2.4 1.9 2.6 E. coeff. (kg/h m2) 7.38 9.97 8.91 8.15

apparent advantage of short operation time is the maintaining of steady syrup brix (referred to as brix out in Fig. 4). The prolonged operation time has adverse effect on steam consumption. As the time progresses the scale buildups in the evaporator. The scale increases the thermal resistance to heat transfer hence high steam consumption is needed to maintain the syrup brix level. Table 8 shows sample of operation data of two successive runs of each set. The data is averaged over the test run. Table 9 shows the evaporator total vapor, steam consumption, economy and evaporation capacity. The evaporation capacity is dened as amount of vapor withdrawn per surface area of evaporator. These parameters are calculated using material and energy balances. The steam economy of the standby set is better than the old set. This is may be attributed to aging problems. The recommended level varies between 3.0 and 3.8. Evaporation capacity ranges between 7.0 and 8.0 kg/h m2.

that the standby evaporator is an effective energy conservation measures as it signicantly reduce the downtime with direct consequences on bagasse savings, sugar recovery and steam economy.
Acknowledgement The authors acknowledge the assistance provided by the Sudanese Sugar Company (SSC) in term of data and facilitation of visits to Sennar Sugar factory.

References
International Sugar Organization. 2009. CogenerationOpportunities in the world sugar industries. In MECAS 05. Prodanic, B.B., A.I. Jokic, J.. Markovic, and Z.Z. Zavargo. 2008. Improving the economic performance of the beet-sugar industry. BIBLID 14507188(39): 5561. doi:10.2298/APT0839055P. Ramjatun, S., J. Gukhool, and D. Seebaluck. 1999. Combined heat and power system in the Mauritian cane sugar factories. In Science and Technology Research Journal 4: 5564. Reduit: University of Mauritius. Urbaniec, K. 2004. The evolution of evaporator stations in the beetsugar industry. Journal of Food Engineering 61: 505508. Urbaniec, K., W. Jackowska, and H. Woch. 1997. Reconstruction of sugar factory Krasnystaw (in Polish). Gazeta Cukrownicza 105: 181185. Zavargo, Z., A. Jokic, B. Prodanic, J. Grbic, and R. Jevtic-Mucibabic. 2006. Performance of falling lm plate evaporators in reconstructed multiple-effect evaporation station in sugar factory. Thermal Science 10(4): 5561.

Conclusion The work provided historical data on Sudanese sugar industry. The data covered the crushed cane, downtime, sugar recovery, fuel consumption for the period from 1963 to 2010. The work also reports the experience gained by using a standby set of evaporator. The analysis concluded

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