National Sugar Institute, Kanpur has made a major breakthrough in the processing technique of sugarcane juice clarification. The technology has been successfully tried in the Experimental Sugar Factor of the institute in collaboration with The Sugar Technologists Association of India & M/s Chemical System Technologies, New Delhi.
In the conventional technology the precipitated impurities from the sugarcane juice are removed by allowing them to settle in continuous settlers which takes about 2-2 ½ hours resulting in colour development, loss of heat and sugar losses. In the developed technology, the impurities are removed through floatation which requires only about 30-45 minutes thus overcoming the drawbacks of the conventional process.
We have used a specially designed reactor, aerator and floatation clarifier for the purpose, said Shri Narendra Mohan, Director, National Sugar Institute, Kanpur. The initial trials indicate colour removal during clarification to be much higher yielding sugar of better quality.
Sugar should be taken out of the process by the shortest route as any increase in processing time is bound to cause increase sugar losses. By reducing retention time to about one-third of the conventional system, sugar factories are going to be benefitted by reduced sugar losses during processing, said Director.
Apart from all other advantage, one more advantage would be lower cost of equipment being of smaller size, said Shri Anup Kanaujia, Assistant Professor of Sugar Engineering. We are sure this technology is going to take over from the conventional technology, particularly in the integrated sugar refineries, he added.
