ABSTRACT
In conventional jaggery plants, the extracted sugarcane juice is used for preparing jaggery, while the residue bagasse is used as fuel. Normally bagasse contains 48 to 52% moisture which affects the calorific value of bagasse, hence drying of bagasse is necessary. In conventional jaggery plants, wet bagasse is spread over the ground and dried under sunlight, which is time-consuming, space-consuming, and laborious work. In the rainy season, conventional bagasse drying is impracticable due to unavailability of intense sunlight. In conventional jaggery plant, a large amount of heat is wasted inside the wall of the combustion chamber. This chapter deals with the experimental performance analysis of newly designed jaggery plant with bagasse drying mechanism. The walls of the combustion chamber are designed and manufactured to recover waste heat to dry the wet bagasse. The experimental outcome reveals that around 5–6% of heat is recovered from walls of the combustion chamber to dry the wet bagasse. It is also observed that around 23–25% of heat is utilised for jaggery preparation and around 69–71% of heat is lost. The moisture removed during the experimentation is ranged between 68% and 70%. Thus, a quick and non-laborious bagasse drying process alternative to conventional sundrying process is developed.
