Review of fundamental milling measurements and modelling, and a way forward

The literature continues to increase on the number of proposed improvements to the performance of milling units, with the aim of achieving high throughput, high pol extraction, and low moisture final bagasse, with equipment that is reliable, low capital cost and minimizes energy use. Invariably, the reported testing has been conducted on equipment installed on large operating milling trains. This has the advantage of obtaining performance measurements in a real-world situation. However, there are also some disadvantages, such as the data being affected by other operating factors, and the need to be conservative in order to not interrupt the process. Recently, there has also been a focus on the difficulties of milling prospective new cane varieties with ‘soft’ milling characteristics, and those tests on these new cane varieties were also carried out at factory scale. In contrast, recent work towards improving the understanding of the fundamental processes involved, and in modelling those processes, has been very limited, if not non-existent. This paper provides a review of fundamental measurements and modelling and introduces an option for progressing computer modelling using the software package LS-DYNA. Key words Milling unit, bagasse, feeding, fundamental measurements, computational modelling, LS-DYNA