Efficiency of traditional jaggery making furnace

摘要

At village level small-scale cottage industries, jaggery making is done using juice obtained after crushing sugarcane at the site with a crusher. The bagasse left after crushing is sun dried in open yard for reducing the moisture content and used asfuel in the furnace for jaggery making. A study was conducted to evaluate the overall heat utilization efficiency of these furnaces. A typical jaggery making furnace consists of fuel feeding, opening, grate, fire place, chimney and ash chamber. It is constructed with brick and mud below the ground level. The smoke produced during combustion is made to go out through a chimney of the oven. The bagasse is fed continuously through the fuel feed opening manually at regular interval of time. The sugarcane juice is kept in a GI vessel of 660 litre capacity placed over the fire place and boiled.