March 25, 2020
Since the beginning of the water recycling systems supplied by Genexutility, Sugar Mills at Rural areas of Mandya (Karnataka) has now developed a potential to recycle approximately 500,000 liters of water every day, at an expenditure of the company. Washing density emerged to be only about 50% of those for alike equipment available subsequently, resulting in valuable savings. The company also has saved on water and energy expenses by putting into use of Genex Utility waste water management system.
Long-term partnership expanded
Mandya Sugar Mills Ltd., in Karnataka, India, was founded in 1953 and manufacturing crystal sugar, industrial-grade alcohol, fuel ethanol, bio-compost and electricity. The company was looking for treating the water waste from its distillery operations and to recycle this water to save the unnecessary expenses on water, energy and treatment.
The target was zero liquid release
Mandya Sugar Mills selected Genex Utility to deal with the waste water trouble using a six-impact evaporator (FilmVap and ViscoVap ) that integrates falling-film and enforced circulation design and stripping columns for degasification and crystallize polishing for all the cleansed product produced from the company’s distillation plant.
Genex Utility had already been working with Mandya Sugar Mills for a decade now, appreciating the company’s sugar operations by supplying plate heat exchangers, decanter centrifuges for spent wash clarification, an evaporator for bio-methanated spent wash and a Distillation polishing system. Genex Utility had also provided purified juice heaters (empowered with an automatic CIP module), extra constituents for the evaporation system and re-boilers for the Distillation polishing system.
Genex Utility offers the most advanced technology
Mandya Sugar Mills had chosen solutions from other suppliers as well, but selected Genex Utility because they were convinced by their prior experience of working with the company, and were also confident that the design of its state of the art engineered system for degasification and distillation stripping would work efficiently to achieve superior-quality water recycling.
“This has now become one of the most effective plant of its kind in India, and the zero-liquid-discharge approach is clearly the way to go,” says Mr. AK Jadhava, General Manager – Distillery, Mandya Sugar Mills. “After Concluding on our requisite for the new bio-methanated spent wash evaporator plant, we examined vision of achieving zero liquid discharge with Genex Utility experts. Genex Utility came up with the exclusive feed degasification and Distillation emptying systems.”
Road to recycling
18 months of technical and commercial discussions, tests and co-operation foregoing the installation. Laboratory tests for feed analysis were conducted at the Mandya Sugar plant. Mandya Sugar plant engineers also visited existing Genex utility evaporator installations to see these functioning.
“We carried a lot of research on it,” says Mr. Swaroop Raj, Executive Director, Mandya Sugar Mills Ltd. “Our team comprehensively travelled to several plants in India where somewhat alike processes are used, and we acquired information on the same from multiple suppliers. Finally, we chose Genex Utility because we were convinced about the advanced technology provided and their experience with its handling. We have faith upon them.”
Successful solution
Producing alcohol in the Mandya Sugar Mills distillery liquid sewage (the spent wash). This sewage passes through a bio-methanation procedure to retain energy in the shape of biogas that’s used as fuel in a boiler. After bio-methanation, the sewage regarded as spent wash is released to an evaporator for mixing and the concentrated liquid is then used to produce bio-compost.
Dealing with this spent wash in an evaporator is very challenging, because it contains dissolved gases that include ammonia, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide. Genex Utility therefore supplied a specifically designed degasification unit to remove these gases.
The distilled pollutants from the evaporator is another sewage that was not easy for the sugar mill to deal with for its high concentration of COD and BOD levels. A Genex distillation polishing unit was installed to minimize those levels and enhance water quality so that Mandya Sugar Mills can now recycle this distilled sewage as process water for the fermentation process, and as adjusting water in the cooling towers.
