Cane sugar mill
Encyclopedia
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
that processes sugar cane to produce raw or white sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
.
Processing
Traditionally, sugarcane processing requires two stages. Mills extract raw sugar from freshly harvested cane, and sometimes bleach it to make "mill white" sugar for local consumption. Sugar refineriesSugar refinery
A sugar refinery is a factory which refines raw sugar.Many cane sugar mills produce raw sugar, i.e. sugar with more colour and therefore more impurities than the white sugar which is normally consumed in households and used as an ingredient in soft drinks, cookies and so forth...
, often located nearer to consumers in North America, Europe, and Japan, then produce refined white sugar, which is 99 percent sucrose
Sucrose
Sucrose is the organic compound commonly known as table sugar and sometimes called saccharose. A white, odorless, crystalline powder with a sweet taste, it is best known for its role in human nutrition. The molecule is a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose with the molecular formula...
. Sugar processing may lead to a dust explosion
Dust explosion
A dust explosion is the fast combustion of dust particles suspended in the air in an enclosed location. Coal dust explosions are a frequent hazard in underground coal mines, but dust explosions can occur where any powdered combustible material is present in an enclosed atmosphere.- Conditions for...
, which necessitates the use of non-sparking tools in many sugar mills. These two stages are slowly merging. Increasing affluence in the sugar-producing tropics increased demand for refined sugar products, driving a trend toward combined milling and refining.
Milling
Small rail networks and trucks are common methods of transporting cane to a mill. Newly arrived cane is tested for sugar content and trash percentage.The mill washes, chops, and uses revolving knives to shred the cane. Shredded cane is repeatedly mixed with water and crushed between rollers in the milling tandem; the collected juices contain 10-15 percent sucrose.
Energy in the sugar mill
The remaining fibrous solids, called bagasseBagasse
Bagasse is the fibrous matter that remains after sugarcane or sorghum stalks are crushed to extract their juice. It is currently used as a biofuel and as a renewable resource in the manufacture of pulp and paper products and building materials....
, are burned for fuel in the mill's steam boilers. These boilers produce high-pressure steam, which is passed through a turbine to generate electrical energy (cogeneration
Cogeneration
Cogeneration is the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat....
).
The exhaust steam from the turbine is passed through the multiple effect evaporator station and it is used to heat vacuum pans in the crystallization stage as well as for other heating purposes in the sugar mill.
Bagasse makes a sugar mill more than energy self-sufficient; surplus bagasse goes in animal feed, in paper manufacture, or to generate electricity for sale.
Further processing
The cane juice is next mixed with limeLime (mineral)
Lime is a general term for calcium-containing inorganic materials, in which carbonates, oxides and hydroxides predominate. Strictly speaking, lime is calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide. It is also the name for a single mineral of the CaO composition, occurring very rarely...
to adjust its pH
PH
In chemistry, pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. Pure water is said to be neutral, with a pH close to 7.0 at . Solutions with a pH less than 7 are said to be acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic or alkaline...
to 7. This mixing arrests sucrose's decay into glucose and fructose, and precipitates some impurities. The mixture then sits, allowing the lime and other suspended solids to settle. The clarified juice is concentrated in a multiple-effect evaporator
Multiple-effect evaporator
A multiple-effect evaporator, as defined in chemical engineering, is an apparatus for efficiently using the heat from steam to evaporate water. In a multiple-effect evaporator, water is boiled in a sequence of vessels, each held at a lower pressure than the last...
to make a syrup of about 60 percent sucrose by weight. This syrup is further concentrated under vacuum until it becomes supersaturated, and then seeded with fine sugar crystals. A batch type sugar centrifuge
Centrifuge
A centrifuge is a piece of equipment, generally driven by an electric motor , that puts an object in rotation around a fixed axis, applying a force perpendicular to the axis...
separates the sugar crystals from the mother liquor. These centrifuges have a capacity of up to 2,200 kg per cycle. The sugar from the centrifuges is dried and cooled and then stored in a silo or directly packed into bags for shipment.
The mother liquor from the first crystallization step (A-product) is again crystallized in vacuum pans and then passed through continious sugar centrifugals. The mother-liquor is again crystallized in vacuum pans. Due to the low purity the evapo-crystallization alone is not sufficient to exhaust molasses
Molasses
Molasses is a viscous by-product of the processing of sugar cane, grapes or sugar beets into sugar. The word molasses comes from the Portuguese word melaço, which ultimately comes from mel, the Latin word for "honey". The quality of molasses depends on the maturity of the sugar cane or sugar beet,...
, and so the so-called massecuite (French for “boiled mass”) is passed through cooling crystallizers until a temperature of approx. 45 °C is reached. Then the massecuite is re-heated in order to reduce its viscosity and then purged in the C-produced centrifugals. The run-off from the C-centrifugals is called molasses.
The spun-off sugar from the B-product and C-product centrifugals is re-melted, filtered and added to the syrup coming from the evaporator station.
Raw sugar is yellow to brown. Bubbling sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide is the chemical compound with the formula . It is released by volcanoes and in various industrial processes. Since coal and petroleum often contain sulfur compounds, their combustion generates sulfur dioxide unless the sulfur compounds are removed before burning the fuel...
through the cane juice before evaporation bleaches many color-forming impurities into colorless ones. This sulfitation produces sugar known as "mill white", "plantation white", and "crystal sugar". Such sugar is the most commonly consumed in sugarcane-producing countries.
Back-end refineries
Some cane sugar mills have so-called back-end refineries. In this case, a portion of the raw sugar produced in the mill is directly converted to refined sugar with a higher purity for the local consumption, for exportation or for bottling companies.Factory automation in cane sugar mills
As in many other industries factory automation has been promoted heavily in sugar refineries in recent decades. The production process is generally controlled by a central process control system, which directly controls most of the machines and components. For security reasons only certain special machines, such as the centrifuges in the sugar house, are decentralized. In these cases PLCProgrammable logic controller
A programmable logic controller or programmable controller is a digital computer used for automation of electromechanical processes, such as control of machinery on factory assembly lines, amusement rides, or light fixtures. PLCs are used in many industries and machines...
s are used.