THAMMASAT INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Volume 24, No. 03, Month JULY, Year 2019, Pages 39 - 46

Optimal feeding trajectory for an industrial sugar mill cogeneration plant

Wanwisa Skolpap, Kittiwut Kasemwong

Abstract Download PDF

Using an optimum dynamic scheduling plan, the formulated problem aimed to maximise daily profitability from an existing 12. 5 MW bagasse-based cogeneration plant with a steam capacity of 125 tonne/ h used for sugar refining. The optimal bagasse feed rate yielded a maximum daily profit of 838.49 USD (base case), about 5.14% higher than the conservative constant feeding bagasse into the existing plant. A sensitivity analysis of daily profit was constructed by perturbating the fuel low heating value (LHV), electricity selling rate of electric utility (p) and cost of electricity generation (c) . The maximum daily profit was insensitive to increases in LHV until this LHV was 11% lower than its base case value, which resulted in a decrease in maximum daily profit by 11%. Excessive moisture in the bagasse and the cost of generating electricity (c) caused lower profits, whereas the price of electricity (p) increased profits.

Keywords

Cogeneration plant, Linear programming, Optimum scheduling, Sugar refining process, Sugar mill plant

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