Kanpur: In pursuit of developing low cost, indigenous technologies, experts of National Sugar Institute, Kanpur has developed an automation system for controlling water requirement for condensers of vacuum system. In sugar factories juices and other sugar liquors are boiled under vacuum so as to enable low temperature boiling so as to minimize colour development and sugar losses. By doing so, instead of carrying out boiling at 103-105 deg. C, the boiling is made at 55-60 deg. C.
In conventional condensers, vacuum is created by injecting cold water to condense water vapours and extract air. Generally, the quantity of water for the purpose is not regulated as per vapour load and thus even under the circumstances when lesser quantities of vapours are to be condensed, the water quantity remains same. Thus, unnecessarily higher amount of injection water is pumped necessitating higher power consumption.
In the system developed under the supervision of Shri Virendra Kumar, Senior Instrumentation Engineer and installed in Experimental Sugar Factory of the institute, the quantity of injection water is controlled sensing vacuum, vapour temperature, injection water and outlet water temperature. The trials confirm lesser water requirement and thus decrease in power consumption by around 25%.
Although there are few systems available for the purpose, but we wanted to develop a low cost and sturdy system which is user friendly too. It’s installation in Experimental Sugar Factory shall give a wider exposure to the students about innovative techniques being used for reducing energy requirements in sugar industry, said Shri Narendra Mohan, Director. In a sugar factory of 5000 TCD (tonnes cane per day), adoption of such systems with variable frequency drives at pumps may result in saving of 4000 units of power per day, he added.
