Energy Savings in Sugar Manufacturing with the Implementation of New Membrane Process

In sugar manufacturing the thin juice is concentrated from initial feed concentration of 15 w% to 65-70 w% through evaporation. Membrane technology can be applied to contribute in this as pre-concentration step. In the present work energy saving has been calculated for the concentration of thin sugar juice with the implementation of a newly developed multistage pressure driven membrane process that concentrate thin sugar juice from initial feed concentration of 15 w% to the 50 w%. The process is capable to remove 70 w% of the water from the thin juice without any application of heat and phase change. The final concentration is to be done in multiple effect evaporation to reach 65-70 w%. The calculation has shown that the combined multistage membrane
process and evaporation not only reduces energy consumption of evaporation by 86.9 % (for increasing the concentration from 15 w% to 65 w%) but also reduces the role of multiple effect evaporation in the sugar manufacturing.