Kanpur: The National Sugar Institute has developed a smarter means to catalyse the process of sugarcane juice with the help of a specially designed reactor, aerator and floatation clarifier.
The technology has been successfully tried in the Experimental Sugar Factor of the famed institute.
This feat was reported to be done in direct collaboration with The Sugar Technologists Association of India and M/s Chemical System Technologies, New Delhi.
Institute Director, Narendra Mohan, explained that in the traditional technology, the precipitated contaminants from the sugarcane juice are removed by enabling them to settle in never-ending settlers.
It takes about two hours, developing in colour development, loss of heat and sugar losses.
In the developed technology, the impurities are removed through flotation which requires only about 30-45 minutes thus overcoming the drawbacks of the traditional method.
We have used a specially designed reactor, aerator and floatation clarifier for the purpose, he further added.
He said that the preliminary trials denote 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 increase sugar losses.