Milling
In a sugar mill,
sugarcane is washed, chopped, and shredded by revolving knives.
The shredded cane is repeatedly mixed with water and crushed
between rollers; the collected juices (called
garapa in Brazil) contain 10–15 percent sucrose, and the
remaining fibrous solids, called
bagasse, are burned for fuel. Bagasse makes a sugar mill
more than self-sufficient in energy; the surplus bagasse can be
used for animal feed, in paper manufacture, or burned to
generate electricity for the local power grid.
 The cane juice is
next mixed with lime to adjust its pH to 7. This mixing arrests
sucrose's decay into glucose and fructose, and precipitates out
some impurities. The mixture then sits, allowing the lime and
other suspended solids to settle out, and the clarified juice is
concentrated in a multiple-effect evaporator to make a syrup
about 60 percent by weight in sucrose. This syrup is further
concentrated under vacuum until it becomes supersaturated, and
then seeded with crystalline sugar. Upon cooling, sugar
crystallizes out of the syrup. A centrifuge is used to separate
the sugar from the remaining liquid, or molasses. Additional
crystallizations may be performed to extract more sugar from the
molasses; the molasses remaining after no more sugar can be
extracted from it in a cost-effective fashion is called
blackstrap.
Raw sugar has a
yellow to brown colour. If a white product is desired, sulfur
dioxide may be bubbled through the cane juice before
evaporation; this chemical bleaches many color-forming
impurities into colourless ones. Sugar bleached white by this
sulfitation process is called "mill white," "plantation
white," and "crystal sugar." This form of sugar is the form most
commonly consumed in sugarcane-producing countries.
 In sugar refining,
raw sugar is further purified. It is first mixed with heavy
syrup and then centrifuged clean. This process is called 'affination';
its purpose is to wash away the outer coating of the raw sugar
crystals, which is less pure than the crystal interior. The
remaining sugar is then dissolved to make a syrup, about 70
percent by weight solids.
The sugar solution
is clarified by the addition of phosphoric acid and calcium
hydroxide, which combine to precipitate calcium phosphate. The
calcium phosphate particles entrap some impurities and absorb
others, and then float to the top of the tank, where they can be
skimmed off. An alternative to this "phosphatation" technique is
carbonatation,'
which is similar, but uses carbon dioxide and calcium hydroxide
to produce a calcium carbonate precipitate.
After any
remaining solids are filtered out, the clarified syrup is
decolorized by filtration through a bed of activated carbon;
bone char was traditionally used in this role, but its use is no
longer common. Some remaining colour-forming impurities adsorb
to the carbon bed. The purified syrup is then concentrated to
supersaturation and repeatedly crystallized under vacuum, to
produce white refined sugar. As in a sugar mill, the sugar
crystals are separated from the molasses by centrifuging.
Additional sugar is recovered by blending the remaining syrup
with the washings from affination and again crystallizing to
produce brown sugar. When no more sugar can be economically
recovered, the final molasses still contains 20–30 percent
sucrose and 15–25 percent glucose and fructose.
Facilities
Using the most productive and
eco-friendly processes, we crush tonnes of sugar cane from
our efficient production facilities
Raw Material
We believe that in order to
deliver a superior quality product, we need to have superior
quality raw material too. We lay special emphasis on 0sugarcane
development to ensure this.
Plants & Machinery
We have installd latest state
-of-the art Sugar Production Plant.
Environmental Compliance
We conduct our
business in accordance with a well laid out, comprehensive
environmental policy and environment management system...
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Achieving
and maintaining a leading role in environmental management;
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Consideration of environmental requirements in all business
decisions;
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Continuous
consideration and adoption of environmental policies in our
business units;
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Adoption of
environmental management practices; and
Compliance with statutory norms and requirements
Technology
Know about our state-of-the-art
technology that helps us leverage our superior manufacturing
capabilities, reduce energy consumption and improve sugar
quality.
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