Assessment and Control of Operational Loss of Sugar During Sugar Cane Processing

Case Study from the year 2020 in the subject Agrarian Studies, , language: English, abstract: This paper concentrated on assessing and controlling the operational loss of sugar in various sugar byproducts during cane processing in cane sugar factory.

In the study, factors associated with operational loss were discussed and Kagera Sugar Limited (KSL) was taken as a case study. Operational sucrose loss is divided into two major categories namely, determined losses and undetermined losses. Determined losses are those which can be easily quantified through lab analysis, such as loss in molasses, filter cake and bagasse. Unlike determined losses, undetermined losses are difficult to estimate directly but rather by factory material balance.

Undetermined loss is further classified into chemical loss, mechanical loss and administrative loss. In both losses, the loss through molasses is by far the largest of total loss encountered during cane processing. Objective of this paper was to develop means of increasing sucrose recovery by monitoring sugar loss. After analyzing data collected from KSL production reports, for crushing seasons 2015/16 and 2016/17 the operational loss was 2.83 and 2.87 pol % cane crushed in respective seasons.

This means KSL loses significant amount of sucrose as compared to 2.20 pol% cane crushed for plants installed after 1994 as reported by. Sugar loss in molasses and bagasse was high than others, it was concluded that, the use of three laws of sucrose loss in molasses coupled with optimization of boiling house operations would result in minimized loss of sucrose in molasses. Also, improving extraction would result in minimum sucrose loss in bagasse.