Sugar factories have often plan to expand the plant capacity but, in many cases, the boilers do not have sufficient capacity to handle the increased crushing capacity. In this case, the investment required to increase the plant capacity will be too high in one go when considering the big investment on a new boiler and turbine. Due to the considerably high cost, usually these projects are rejected as not commercially viable as the return on investment is too long.

In this scenario, we suggest our clients to see this challenge as an opportunity and to focus on the general plant performance improvement. In the past two decades, several clients approached us in such a situation. With our expertise, we could help them to lower the process steam and power demand, which gave way to increase the plant capacity considerably with the existing boilers and turbines.

A detailed plant audit is step-1 to assess the present plant operation and thus to pinpoint the bottlenecks as well as process and equipment inefficiencies. In some cases, the plant capacity could be increased up to 50% without investing in new boilers and turbines and also avoiding investments on process house equipment to a good extent.