How Is Sugar Produced?

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Video: How Is Sugar Produced?

Video: How Is Sugar Produced?
Video: SUGAR | How It's Made 2024, November
How Is Sugar Produced?
How Is Sugar Produced?
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The sugar we consume is the final product after processing the sugar beet. The production of the final product, which we all know, takes several steps.

Harvesting sugar beets

Sugar beet is harvested in autumn and early winter by digging it out of the soil. That is why, after being transported to the factories specialized in sugar production, it is washed and cleaned of the remaining leaves, stones and other debris before it can be processed.

Sugar extraction

The process of extracting sugar begins with cutting the beets into small slices. In this way, the parts from which the sugar is extracted are increased. The extraction takes place in a diffuser, where the reed stays for about an hour in warm water. In principle, diffusion is a process in which the color and aroma of tea is obtained from tea leaves immersed in warm water in a teapot.

Here, however, the diffuser weighs several hundred tons when full of beets and water. It is a horizontal or vertical moving container in which the pieces of beet pass slowly from one end to the other as the water moves in the opposite direction. This is called reverse flow, in which the more water moves, the stronger the sugar solution becomes and is usually called essence.

Squeezing sugar

The pieces of beets passed through the diffuser are wet and the water in them still contains sugar. To do this, they are then squeezed in a special squeezer so that as much essence as possible can be separated from them. This essence is mixed with the water from the diffuser, and the squeezed beets, already mashed, are sent to a drying factory, where they are made into pills, which are an important part of some animal foods.

How is sugar produced?
How is sugar produced?

Carborization of sugar

The next step in the process is to clean the essence before it is used for sugar production. This is done by the so-called carbonization process, in which small clots of limestone are formed in the sugar essence. They, after developing in the essence, collect all the non-sugar particles and after being filtered by the essence, the limestone takes with it all these non-sugar particles. The sugar essence is then ready for processing, except that it is very rare.

Boiling sugar

The last step in the process is to place the syrup in a huge tray, which usually holds about 60 tons of sugar syrup. Here even more water is boiled until the state of the syrup becomes suitable for the formation of sugar crystals. You may have done something like this in school, but not with sugar, because it is quite difficult to make well-formed sugar crystals. Once formed, the mixture of sugar crystals and the essence is centrifuged to separate, as in the laundry - the clothes are centrifuged to be dry. The sugar crystals are then dried with hot air and packaged, ready for delivery.

The final product is sugar

The final product is white and ready to eat, whether from households or soft drink producers. In the production of unrefined sugar, as not all sugar is extracted from the essence, there is a secondary production of a sweet product - beet molasses. It is used for the production of food for cattle or sent to factories for the production of alcohol. Beet molasses does not have the same smell and taste as sugar cane molasses, so it cannot be used to make rum.

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