Cogeneration and Pollution Control in Sugar Mills: a Review

Cogeneration And Pollution Control in Sugar mills: A review

      Aakanksha Tyagi



1. Introduction

India has been considered the original home of sugarcane and sugar. The art of making sugar was known during 4th and 6th century. Industrial centrifugal sugar production in India started in the mid of 1930s in sub tropical belt. The Indian sugar industry has achieved the unique position of being the largest producer of crystal sugar in the world through extensive network of 540 sugar factories located in India.

Next to textile, sugar industry provides direct employment to more than 3.6 lakh persons. The cultivation and transportation of sugarcane to the sugar mills provide a source of income to large number of farmers, laborers, technicians, transport operators. It also supports a large number of small scale industries located in both rural and urban areas.

India is the single largest producer of sugar including traditional cane sugar sweeteners, khandsari and gur equivalent to 26 million tonnes raw value followed by Brazil in the second place at 18.5 million tonnes. Even in respect of white crystal sugar, India has ranked NO.1 position out of 7 in last 10 years.

1.1 Production figures of Indian Sugar mills- an overview

    • Area 4.36 million tones

    • Sugar cane production             281.57 million tones

    • Yield             64.6 tones/ hectare

    • Average milling duration 140 days

    • Average capacity 3343 tonnes / day

    • Total cane crushed 194.36 million tones

    • Total sugar production 20.14 million tones

    • Average sugar recovery 10.36% cane

    • Molasses produced             8.88 million tones



1.2 Contribution to Indian economy

Sugar industry has played a pivotal role in agriculture and rural development. Around 7.4% of rural population is involved in cultivation of sugar cane. The industry provide employment to 0.5 million...