Overview

A model is developed for an existing sugar process, factory, or refinery to simulate the process. The results of the simulation and actual process data are compared to verify the accuracy of the model.

Adjustments can be made to the model to see if the performance will improve. Sugars™ predicts the change in operating results by doing the complete mass, heat, and color balances while considering all changes in vapor-liquid, sucrose solubility, and crystallization.

This is the difference in revenues from all products (sugar, molasses, bagasse, pulp, etc.) and the cost of all consumables (cane, beet, raw sugar, steam, water, chemicals, etc.). Net process revenue will show the differences between the original and changed scenario to assist in making investment decisions related to process changes and equipment purchases.

Using Sugars™, management can quickly evaluate changes and look at the net process and revenues generated by the factory for each of the proposed changes to easily assess capital investment accurately. Within minutes, management can evaluate the economics of an investment, and at the same time, evaluate the effect of the proposed change on the other areas of the process.

Some flow streams in a factory cannot be monitored either because of their location or because the instruments used to measure simply can’t do so effectively.

Sugars™ simulation provides full details of every flow stream in the process by determining characteristics of the existing and evaluating inference from other flow streams. This information may be necessary when designing equipment for the process, or to develop a more thorough understanding of it.

Building a computer model of a proposed factory allows alternate designs to be tried quickly and easily to determine a new factory layout. The simulation results are used to see the advantages or disadvantages of the different alternatives.

Changing the routing of a process flow stream is simply a matter of clicking on the flow stream with a mouse and moving it to another destination. Altering the equipment simply requires changing the performance data for the station in the model and running another simulation to see the results. Design simulation can save costly mistakes, and the Sugars™ simulation is quick and easy to use.

Using its simulation, factory data can be reconciled by comparing measured and replicated values. Data that is not consistent can be disregarded; thus, the integrity of measured data is improved through this process. Crosschecking measured values can be helpful for identifying faulty measuring devices, and reconciled data can result in management reports that are more accurate.

Sugar yield can be increased by process and/or equipment changes. Change in the performance of equipment can be entered into the Sugars™ model to evaluate the change in sugar production.

Process changes, such as imbibition water for mills, filter press performance, different boiling schemes, and centrifugal performance can be modeled and tested to evaluate how the sugar production would change. Molasses desugarization, ion exchange, membrane filtration, etc. can all be modeled and simulated to evaluate their effect on the sugar yield.

Process engineers can learn while building the Sugars™ model used to simulate the performance of a factory or refinery. As changes are made, the process engineer can observe the results from the changes and gain valuable operating experience that might otherwise take years to acquire from actual factory operations.

Energy savings can come from many sources. Modeling and simulation allow rapid evaluation of each test scenario to arrive at a process and/or equipment change that can reduce energy consumption of a factory. With quick simulation scenarios, energy reduction can be evaluated to reduce costs.

With Sugars™, research and development (R&D) projects can be modeled and simulated before funds are committed. The expected performance of the new process or equipment is entered into the model, and a simulation is made to evaluate its effectiveness for improving factory operations. Projects that show significant potential financial gains can be given a higher priority than those that are less attractive, allowing for quick adjustments.

• Analyze unlimited numbers of factories and/or configurations through simulation.
• Printouts are provided for the mass, heat, and color balances and the net process revenues to easily review
• Different station types can be customized to construct a flow diagram of the factory, and the stations can be arranged in any order.
• Saturated and superheated steam formulations are included within the program.
• Microsoft Access data files are used by Sugars™ to store all the data for a model.
• Error codes with descriptive messages are generated for the exceptions detected during program execution.
• A User’s Guide provides many examples, including beet sugar factory, cane sugar factory, cane refinery, ion exchange, and molasses desugarization.

Download an Overview of Sugars™