Project outcomes
- Deliver recommendations for future research towards targeted energy reduction interventions and equipment where these have been indicated by the project results.
- Develop a system for energy monitoring and benchmarking including data collection, synthesis and reconciliation, and index calculation.
- Make recommendations for the implementation of an inter-factory benchmarking system.
Focus areas
- Overall energy transfer design via exergy analysis
- Potential for alternative renewable energy supply through solar energy concentration
- Process energy use reduction through development of gas hydrate water separation as a novel energy efficient technology
- Energy use reduction during operation through development of monitoring and benchmarking tools
Investigations into waste heat recovery technologies and solar process heat integration did not identify significant opportunities for energy cost savings in raw sugar production. Similarly, new gas hydrate technology for reducing the energy cost of concentrating sugar juice does not show technical or economic promise. However, a monitoring and benchmarking strategy developed for tracking energy consumption in sugar production shows significant potential for savings by identifying causes of high consumption in a highly complex and interactive energy supply system. The approach allows reasonable factory-specific targets to be identified and maps critical supply management bottlenecks. A case study suggests that the approach has potential to save as much as R 3.4 million/year in a factory with a high fuel bill, and up to R 10 million/year across the South African industry without significant capital investment. The Excel-based tools that have been built have been effective for retrospective analysis of energy supply efficiency. The follow-on SIF project Sugarcane Technology Enabling Programme – Sugar Factory 4.0 (STEP-SF4.0) will digitize these tools for real time energy supply management.
Dr Kitty Foxon
Research & Development, SMRI
