Cane sugar

Alcoholes en Estados Unidos

cane sugar is sugar produced from sugar cane. The manufacturing process of high fineness refined sugar from sugar cane uses natural physical-chemical processes to remove impurities.

Process of making sugar cane

The manufacturing process consists of the following steps:

Sugar Cane Entry

The cane that arrives at the factory is weighed and then unloaded onto the tables with cranes.

Grinding

Molinos in a sugar mill in Guatemala

The cane is subjected to a preparation process that consists of breaking or shredding the cells of the stems. Then some conveyor belts lead it to the mills, where the sucrose extraction process is carried out.

The bagasse leaves the last mill towards the chimneys, to be used as fuel, or to the bagasse deposit, from where it is dispatched to be used as raw material in the production of paper.

Clarification

The juice from the mills goes to the tank, where its degree of acidity is lowered. There it is kept.

The alkalized juice is pumped into heaters, where its temperature is raised to a level close to boiling point.

Then, before going to the clarifiers, it goes to a glazing tank open to the atmosphere, in which it loses between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius due to natural evaporation, the speed of the juice is also changed from turbulent to laminar. In the clarifiers, the solids are settled and decanted. The decanted solids pass through rotary filters, they work under vacuum and are covered with fine metal mesh that allows the juice to pass through, but retains the filter cake, which can be used as fertilizer in the plantations.

Evaporation

Then the clarified juice goes to the evaporators, which work under vacuum to facilitate boiling at a lower temperature. In this step, 75% of the water content is extracted from the juice, to obtain the product or syrup.

Crystallization

Continuous cover in a Hawaiian sugar mill.

The sucrose that contains the syrup is cooked in vacuum pans. These concoctions will produce raw sugar (sugar for refining), molasses (for production for animals), white sugar (for direct consumption) or refined.

Separation or centrifugation

Centrifuge in a sugar mill

Sugar crystals are separated from the remaining honey in centrifuges. These are very fine mesh cylinders that rotate at high speed. The liquid leaves through the mesh and the crystals remain in the cylinder, then it is washed with water. The honeys return to the bins, or are used as raw material for the production of ethyl alcohol in the distillery. The first quality sugar retained in the centrifuge mesh is dissolved with hot water and sent to the refinery to continue the process. It should be noted that at this point what is called blond sugar is obtained due to the color of the crystals. The process by which brown sugar becomes white sugar or very fine sugar is detailed below.

Refined

Through refining, dyes or inorganic materials that the liquor may contain are eliminated. The dissolved sugar is treated with acid and calcium saccharate to form a compound that drags the impurities, forming a homogeneous mixture, which are easily removed in the classifier. The resulting liquor is concentrated, crystallized again in a tank and passed to centrifuges to remove the syrup.

Drying

The refined sugar is washed with steam condensers, dried with hot air, classified according to the size of the crystal and stored in silos for later packaging.

Packaging

Raw sugar for export comes directly from the centrifuges to the storage silos. There it is loaded in bulk on the tractor-trailers that will take it to the port of shipment or it is packaged in 50 kg bags to be used in the manufacture of concentrated feed for animals.

Refined sugar is packaged in presentations of 5, 500, 1000, 2500 and 3000 grams; 50, 100 and 150 kilograms and even per ton.