ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION The Potential of Heat Recovery for Air-Conditioning in Sugar Industry D. B. Uphade 1 Received: 15 May 2020 / Accepted: 6 July 2021 Ó The Institution of Engineers (India) 2021 Abstract This research paper explores the potential of heat recovery systems for air-conditioning in the sugar industry. Typically, a temperature of flue gases is in the range of 150–300 °C. An exhaust gas contains greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, water vapours, etc. These gases are responsible for increasing the tem- perature of an environment. There is a huge potential for recovery of waste heat of exhaust gases, as they have high temperature. The exhaust gas temperature can be reduced by recovery of heat for air-conditioning. This allows improving the quality and productivity of sugar manufac- turing by providing a comfortable atmosphere. The freshly produced sugar should be cooled and dried to reduce moisture near equilibrium level before packaging and storage. If the sugar contains more moisture than 0.05%, conglomeration occurs. It also favours the formation of clumped sugar. Conventionally, sugar is conditioned using electrically operated chillers. Additional electricity is consumed by the sugar conditioning process. This needs to be prevented using a heat recovery from hot flue gases. An air-conditioning of packaging houses can avoid the for- mation of conglomerates of sugar by providing cool and dehumidified air. Silo is a cylindrical vessel used to store the sugar. It is used to condition the sugar by using dehu- midified air in most of the recently installed sugar plants (Linek in J Sugar Ind 142: 476–480, 2017). Sugar pack- aging houses and offices of sugar factories can be air- conditioned using the flue heat recovery system. The cooling capacity can be used to condition the boiling house and then milling house. An electricity generation and then using it to run an air-conditioner is the costlier operation, even if a sugar factory has its own powerhouse. The roadmap of CFC and HCFC refrigerant phase-out is already alarming to use the eco-friendly refrigerants in vapour compression systems. Hence, a vapour absorption cycle is the better choice rather than a vapour compression cycle (Ozone Cell, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, 2017). The vapour absorption cycle uses the temperature and heat of exhaust gas as the driving force to run the system. The investigations show that the sugar factory with 2500 TCD capacity can produce 293 TR of cooling. This cooling effect is sufficient to condition the entire sugar factory. Keywords Heat recovery  Vapour absorption cycle  Comfort conditions  Coefficient of Performance List of Symbols c Cooling CCR Cane crushing rate cp Specific heat at constant pressure, kJ/kg.K CFC Chlorofluorocarbon eg Exhaust gas COP Coefficient of performance i Inlet HCFC Hydrochlorofluorocarbon o Outlet R Refrigerant m Excess air, fraction TR Tons of refrigeration m Mass, kg TCD Ton of cane crushed per day & D. B. Uphade dbuphade.iitb@gmail.com 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Maratha Vidya Prasarak Samaj’s, Rajarshi Shahu Maharaj Polytechnic, Nashik, India 123 J. Inst. Eng. India Ser. C https://doi.org/10.1007/s40032-021-00741-4