Environment, Development and Sustainability, vol.24, no.11, pp.12542-12581, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.India’s annual Khoa (Heat Desiccated Milk Food) production was approximately estimated as 7.58 × 106 MT in the year 2019. The khoa is consumed in huge quantities for preparing Indian sweets and; the magnitudes of steam (2365 kg/MT) and electricity (89.23kWh/MT) consumptions in this activity are quite high. In view of this, the present research is an effort to summarize the main derivatives from thermodynamic as well as enviroeconomic analysis of a khoa production unit along with comprehensive assessment, pertaining to mitigation of harmful emissions post adoption of clean energy solution (PV Panels). The aforementioned approaches provide detailed information about qualitative and quantitative aspects of energy consumptions, destructions and improvement potentials along with clear information about mitigation of CO2 (840 Tonnes) during lifetime operation of unit. The exergy efficiency and specific exergy destruction for khoa production unit were enumerated as 26.80% and 665.90 kJ/kg, respectively. The energy efficiency, exergy efficiency, energy improvement potential and exergy improvement potential of steam generation unit vary in the range of approximately 22–99%, 0.25–94%, 0.06–490 kW and 2–15098 kW, respectively; while on the other hand energy efficiency, exergy efficiency, energy improvement potential and exergy improvement potential of khoa production unit found to be in the range of approximately 40–99%, 25–88%, 0.01–38 kW and 0.001–14 kW, respectively. The investment made (10,737 $) for production of clean energy (electricity) will generate an approximate economic saving of 4500 USD/year with a payback period of 6.8 years in line with revenue attainment of 12,180 $ for the lifetime operation of unit.