Non-Centrifugal Sugars Production via Thermic Oil Heaters: A Case Study on GI Tagged Natural Sweetener

Non-centrifugal sugars (NCS) are traditionally consumed sweeteners which are gaining momentum in the global market due to the presence of nutritional and mineral content. Field studies at the traditional production site of Marayur, Kerala revealed the energy efficiency as low as 10–12% with an effective bagasse consumption of around 8 kg bagasse/kg NCS produced. As an alternative, the concentration of cane juices by thermic oil heaters and infrared electric heating has been studied, and it has been found that the thermic oil-aided evaporation can enhance the energy efficiency to 79 ± 3.43%. The performance of infrared (IR) heating and thermic oil evaporation was studied in terms of energy consumption and thermal efficiency. It was found that the IR heating improved the energy efficiency to 52.64 ± 2.6% in bench-scale studies, but IR heating cannot be implemented in field-level systems due to difficulty in controlling the power supply during processing and thermic oil-controlled evaporation was found to perform better than the existing improved methods like multi-pan evaporation and freeze concentration techniques. Controlled concentration by thermic oil heating provided energy efficiency of around 80% and reduced the bagasse consumption to 1.2 kg bagasse/kg NCS produced. Thus, replacement of traditional open pan evaporation would help in conserving energy and also aids in production of NCS in a more hygienic way.