Fuel efficient jaggery making pan 

Jaggery making from sugar cane juice is a rural industry that is spread across 10 states of India. Jaggery making involves crushing of the harvested sugarcane to obtain the sugarcane juice and evaporation of the juice to obtain solid jaggery. This is a very energy intensive operation and the fuel used is often the residual bagasse after the sugarcane crushing. There is a lot of potential for fuel saving by modifying the jaggery stove. However in order to minimize changes to the stove design, (as there is resistance to change from the jaggery makers) it is simpler to modify the design of the pan without making too many changes in the stove design. 

The intervention experimented by TIDE was to increase the surface area of the jaggery pan by incorporating fins on the lower surface of the pan. It therefore developed and tested different fin designs. A pan with about 2000 small fins welded onto the bottom surface was fabricated and tested at  Jaggery making site in Tumkur district. This increased the surface area of the pan by about 37%. Several flats instead of pins were also welded to the pan bottom and experiments conducted in the Belgaum region. The data collected so far shows that fuel saving of about 30 kg per batch is possible and the processing time per batch can be reduced by 20 minutes. The response from the local unit has been very positive. The weight of jaggery processed per batch is also higher by about 5%. TIDE is now interacting with various jaggery-making units to motivate them to use a fuel efficient jaggery pan.

Features

• Increases the surface area of the pan by 35- 50%
• Reduces fuel consumption by 30 kg per batch
• Reduces batch time by 20 minutes per batch
• No change in the jaggery making process
• No need for operator training
• Investment limited to pan finning costs
• No need for plant shut down for stove design modification 

Prof. Lokras inspecting modified jaggery pan with fins at the bottom surface