Only one detail has remained unchanged: first you need to grow sugar cane, collect and bring it to where it will be turned into sugar.
It is clear that the shorter the path from the field to production, and the more sugar is produced in this production, the more profitable. Therefore, today the main sugar place on the planet is the island of Mauritius. It is as if it was made for growing sugar cane. At least that’s what the Mauritians and, it seems, the reeds themselves think so.
Almost all land in Mauritius, apart from a narrow strip of beaches along the coastline and the territories of the sugar factories, has been turned into a cane plantation.
First spin
When the reed is harvested and brought to the factory, it is crushed and then juice is squeezed out of these wet chips. Earlier, when manual labor was almost free, and the demand for sugar was predictable and small, it was done by hand. Now they use special machines that operate on the same principle as the drum of the washing machine at the spin stage.
Sweet cane juice is pumped out, and the remaining cake, dry as gunpowder, is said to be used for fuel (although it is not very clear why at least something should be additionally heated in such a heavenly climate). This juice, for all its sweetness, is very dirty, and there is only about fifteen percent sugar in it. The rest is water, fiber fragments, soil from the fields, chlorophyll. It is clear that something needs to be done about this.
Chalk, water and fire
First, the juice is cleaned of dirt. It is heated, then mixed with a solution of slaked lime or chalk, and in this form is pumped into a hefty tank. Everything further happens in a completely natural way: chalk binds all suspended particles and settles to the bottom of the tank, and pure juice flows out in a thin stream. The unsympathetic sludge from the tank also contains a certain amount of sugar, which is a pity to throw away, so the sludge is washed with water, and this sweetish water is passed through several highly modern vacuum filters and added to the purified juice.
The purified cane juice is evaporated. This is done slowly and carefully, because you cannot miss the moment when the juice reaches the density necessary for the start of crystallization (but this process is started not by itself, but only by adding sugar crystals to the juice). From this point on, the juice is called “mother solution”. And this is almost sugar.
Crystallization
Most sugar factories produce sugar crystallization in at least three containers, and it is this system that allows brown sugar of varying degrees of saturation to be obtained. It is based on the fact that as long as there is at least some sugar in the mother solution, when sugar crystals are added from the outside, the crystallization process starts with renewed vigor.
For convenience, let us denote the crystallization vessels A, B and C. The mother solution is placed in the A vessel in its original state, sugar crystals are added, the heating is turned on – it’s gone.
The sugar obtained in container A is the lightest sugar that can be obtained without further refining. The ratio of pure sucrose and molasses (molasses) in it is balanced and pleasant to the taste. To separate the sugar from the solution, the contents of the container are processed in a centrifuge: sugar in one direction, molasses in the other. Such sugar can be delivered directly to shops; they do just that by drying it with hot air.
Then the impoverished solution is transferred to vessel B, where crystallization is started again. The sugar obtained there is darker, its taste is richer. Some manufacturers add some of it to the light sugar from tank A, add water and recrystallize to achieve the desired color and flavor.
The mother solution enters tank C when the percentage of sucrose in it falls to a minimum, and the percentage of molasses rises to a maximum. The sugar obtained in it is used to start the crystallization process in tank B. In addition, both such sugar, which is very dark and aromatic, and the remaining molasses are valuable in themselves.
cleaning
However, if you want to get refined sugar, the process is different. After the crystallization is complete, the raw sugar crystals are mixed with the completely empty mother liquor, unable to support the growth of sugar crystals. This mixture is called “magma”. It is treated with the same chalk solution, and then passed through an activated carbon filter (in short). Another method, used primarily in the United States, is steam refining of raw sugar while a turbine is rotating.
There is another method for refining sugar, very high-performance, but, unfortunately, it uses phosphoric acid, a very poisonous thing.
The white cane sugar obtained as a result of refining is no different from beet sugar, neither in taste nor in chemical composition. Sucrose is sucrose.