Separation Technologies for Cane Sugar Processing, Investigator: Kochergin, V. LAB93869
ACCESSION NO: 0212209 SUBFILE: CRIS
PROJ NO: LAB93869 AGENCY: CSREES LA.B
PROJ TYPE: HATCH PROJ STATUS: NEW
START: 01 OCT 2007 TERM: 30 SEP 2012
INVESTIGATOR: Kochergin, V. N.
PERFORMING INSTITUTION:
AUDUBON SUGAR INSTITUTE
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY
BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA 70893
SEPARATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR CANE SUGAR PROCESSING
CLASSIFICATION
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KA |
Subject |
Science |
Pct |
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402 |
2020 |
2020 |
55 |
| 501 |
2020 |
2020 |
45 |
CLASSIFICATION HEADINGS: R402 . Engineering Systems and Equipment; S2020 . Sugar cane; F2020 . Engineering; R501 . New and Improved Food Processing Technologies
BASIC 15% APPLIED 45% DEVELOPMENTAL 40%
NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: The sugar industry in Louisiana has to become more competitive. Sugar quality issues must be addressed. This project investigates innovative separation and purification technologies for high-quality sugar production.
OBJECTIVES: Objective 1. Improve removal of suspended solids by designing and testing new industrial clarifiers by adapting principles of fractal fluid distribution technology that has proved very efficient in various engineering applications. Objective 2. Investigate application of innovative clarification agents providing additional decolorization benefits that will decrease the overall cost of raw sugar production. A combination of juice decolorization and removal of suspended solids will also yield quality improvement of final product as well as reduction of energy use in the milling process. Objective 3. Develop concepts promoting intensification of unit operations, such as sedimentation, filtration, crystallization, ion exchange, etc. Optimize the design features and propose innovative equipment to improve separation and purification of cane sugar solutions in raw mills and sugar refineries. Objective 4. Develop and optimize purification technologies targeting improvements in quality of raw sugar. Investigate methods of production of VHP (very high pol) and very low color (VLC) sugar and its behavior in long-term (about 10 months) storage. Relatively long raw-sugar storage period is specific to the Louisiana sugar industry, where the production season lasts for about 90 days.
APPROACH: Task 1a. Carry out bench-scale tests to optimize the concentration and the method of addition of chemicals to process juice to maximize decolorization and precipitation conditions. Task 1b. Silica content in the clarified juice and effect of various parameters on the dissolved and colloidal silica in the clarified juice will be studied. Silica along with calcium and magnesium is one of the components affecting scaling characteristics of juice (hence, energy usage in evaporators). Task 2. Perform bench-scale tests required for comparison of existing and newly proposed clarification agents, estimate settling parameters and the effects of clarification path length and directions of fluid flow on clarifier performance. Task 3. Construct pilot prototypes of equipment for flow visualization inside clarification and ion exchange equipment. Using model systems (water, corn syrup or sugar solutions) test fractal fluid distribution network efficiency and compare with the conventional designs. Task 4. Modeling of fluid flows in the fractal distribution network and the clarifiers to compare with observed flow visualization. Optimize main design parameters for fractal fluid distribution network to achieve uniform flow and minimize settling in the distribution channels. Task 5. Devise and implement procedures to illustrate the differences between conventional and proposed designs. Task 6. Design, construct and test new equipment (clarifier and ion exchanger) on a larger scale. Establish the correlation of major parameters, such as settling velocity, juice clarity and mud quality for clarifier tests. Task 7. Provide recommendations on process design required for equipment integration into industrial process. Task 8. Construct and test large-scale pilot equipment in one the cane mills during the processing season using similar methodology established in the bench and pilot test programs to assure the scalability of obtained results. Task 9. Calculate material and energy balances and prepare technical recommendations for construction of new equipment and retrofitting existing clarification equipment. Task 10. Samples of seed will be collected from each Louisiana mill along with representative samples of massecuite obtained when particular samples were used. That will allow observing both initial and final crystal population in the massecuite. Influence of seed preparation procedures on the quality of seed and resulting crystal distribution in the pans will be evaluated. The available seed preparation practices will be reviewed and optimized to provide the best crystal population that will result in better centrifugation, molasses handling and exhaustion. Task 11. Collaborate with raw sugar mills to produce sufficient quantities of high-quality sugar and set up a program for sample collection to gain understanding of how sugar quality parameters change during storage. Evaluate the technologies required to consistently produce sugar of VHP and VLC quality in mill-crystallization schemes, washing conditions, etc. Provide a report to the industry.
KEYWORDS: sugar industry; separation technologies; fractal fluid distribution; sugar quality; raw sugar storage; clarification; ion exchange
PROJECT CONTACT:
Name: Kochergin, V.
Phone: 225-6420135
Fax: 225-6428790
Email: vkochergin@agcenter.lsu.edu
SUPPLEMENTARY DATA: Institution Type: SAES Region: 2 Process Date: 2007/09/17
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