Sustainable Solution to Mitigate Carbon Emission for the Cumulative Electrical and Thermal Energy Demand in Silk Reeling Process in Southern India

Abstract

Presently, consequence of carbon emission from the unorganized industries has detrimental effect on the environment. In India silk industries are unorganized at the medium and small-scale level, where production of silk fiber through silk reeling process requires large amount of energy. Thermal energy demand for the silk reeling industries accounts for about 50% of the total fuel consumption where temperature range for the process are 25 o C to 95 o C. Electrical energy demand for different reeling units and equipment and for irrigation contributes most of the energy consumption from the remaining 50% fuel consumption. In the present study, a sustainable solution is provided for the cumulative electrical and thermal energy demand in silk reeling process. The methodology employs photovoltaic thermal with the conventional system to reduce the firewood consumption and to mitigate the carbon emission. In the study multi-domain energy conversion and performance of photovoltaic thermal is simulated using Simscape, Simscape electrical, Simscape fluid and Simulink package on MATLAB software. Total efficiency of photovoltaic thermal conversion system obtained from the simulation is 53.132% where electrical efficiency is 17.578% and thermal efficiency is 35.555%. For the production of 1kg reeled silk from cocoon, carbon emission is reduced from 76.11 kg/day for the conventional system to 29.372 kg/day and 28.203 kg/day for the open field photovoltaic thermal and roof-top photovoltaic thermal system respectively by considering the system life period of 10 years. Further, a relation between water and energy is shown in future work for more potent solution in terms of energy efficiency and carbon mitigation.