Exergy and structural analysis of raw juice production and steam-power units of a sugar production plant

In this paper, exergy analysis successfully assesses the true thermodynamic efficiency of chemical processes. It also indicates the plant irreversibility distribution among plant components, revealing those which contribute most to plant inefficiency. A structural analysis is also performed to determine the effects of some operating parameters on the local irreversibility rates with respect to the overall plant irreversibility rate. This study deals with the application of exergy analysis to raw juice production and the steam-power units of the sugar production plant from sugar beet. The structural bond coefficients of the some operating system parameters are calculated. It is concluded that if the optimal values determined for the operating system parameters in this work were chosen, the total exergy loss of the plant would decrease 4.21%.