APPLICATION OF CFD IN THE SUGAR INDUSTRY

The paper summarises a wide range of ongoing applications of CFD in the sugar industry. Principal among these have been the development of bagasse combustion technologies and understanding the processes involved in bagasse combustion and steam generation. SRI has been active for over 10 years in CFD with the FURNACE code, encompassing the full range of applications from fundamental code development, the generation and commercialisation of new ideas and technologies, to the resolution of practical plant problems. Typical areas of application have included particle erosion, corrosion and heat transfer in tube bundle units, particle drying, ignition and burnout dynamics, the development of advanced boiler designs and more recently CO and NOx pollutant generation and reduction. CFD has been applied extensively in the design of the new-generation SRI clarifier that has achieved throughput increases of over 75% with improved clarified juice quality. Other applications of CFD that are summarised include the modeling and design upgrading of evaporators, capacity and design improvements including stirrer retrofits to vacuum pans used in sugar crystallization, and the development of bagasse gasification technology for advanced power generation. It is demonstrated that the full benefits of CFD in the delivery of commercial outcomes, for new technologies and the solution of operating plant problems, are achieved through close interaction between code development and validation via full-scale plant simulation. This two-way interaction enhances the code fundamentals by focusing on practical issues and increases the confidence of endusers in the capabilities and accuracy of the CFD predictions, to an extent that justifies firm engineering decisions on commercial plant based solely on the characteristics predicted by the code.