CHEN 510

QUALITY CONTROL IN SUGAR PRODUCTION

BY
GROUP SIX
PRESENTED TO
PROF. C. S AJINOMOH
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA
AUGUST, 2021
PRESENTATION OUTLINE

• INTRODUCTION
• LITERATURE REVIEW
• RAW MATERIAL OF SUGAR PRODUCTION
• CLASSIFICATION OF SUGAR
• QUALITY CONTROL OF SUGAR PRODUCTION
• SUGAR QUALITY PARAMETER
• CONCLUSION
• REFERENCES

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iNTRODUCTION
• WHAT IS SUGAR?
Sugar it is a sweet crystalline substance obtain from sugar cane or sugar
beet consisting essentially of sucrose, and used as a sweetener in food
and drink
• WHAT IS SUGAR TECHNOLOGY?
Sugar Technology is a branch of engineering that deals with production,
refinement and packaging of sugar from sugar cane.
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LITERATURE REVIEW
Sugar is a refined product from raw materials (sugarcane and sugar beet). Cane sugar was first

used by man in Polynesia from where it spread to India. In 510 BC the Emperor Darius of Persia

invaded India where he found “the reed which gives honey without bees”. The secret of cane sugar

was kept a closely guarded secret whilst the finished product was exported. When the Arab peoples

in the seventh century AD invaded Persia in 642 AD, they found sugar cane being grown and learnt

how sugar was made. As their expansion continued they established sugar production in other

lands that they conquered including North Africa and Spain (Jenkins et al., 2012). .
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RAW MATERIAL OF SUGAR PRODUCTION
• SUGAR CANE
Sugar cane is the major material for the production of
sugar, it accounts for about 80% of world sugar
production, making it the major raw material. Sugarcane
is a tall tropical grass in which the stems are harvested,
not the leaves

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RAW MATERIAL OF SUGAR PRODUCTION CONTD.

SUGAR BEET
Sugar is formed through a process of photosynthesis
in the sugar beet’s rosette of leaves, the size of
which differs according to the sugar beet variety.
The root serves as a reservoir for the sugar, which
can represent between 15% and 21% of the sugar
beet’s total weight. The root of the beet (taproot)
contains 75% water and 25% dry matter .

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CLASSIFICATION OF SUGAR
• Raw Sugar
Raw sugar are the crystals that form in the liquid of sugar cane after it undergoes milling
and extraction. It is an intermediate product of refining and affination process of sugar
manufacturing that consists of pale yellow to brown sugar crystals covered with a film
of syrup.

• White Sugar

A white is a purified and granulated sugar that is manufactured from any raw sugar by the
process of purification consisting broadly of affination, melting, chemical treatment,
filtration, de-colorization and re-crystallization.

• Brown Sugar

• The brown sugar is the raw, moist and dark sugar obtained after the sugar cane
dehydration. It does not go through a refining process, so it maintains the calcium and
the iron, in addition to other vitamins and minerals

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QUALITY CONTROL OF SUGAR PRODUCTION
• Quality control is a system of maintaining standards in
manufactured products by testing a sample of output
against the specification.
• Quality is of utmost importance in all commodity trading,
and can impact the price, viability and legitimacy of a
product.
• In the food and beverage industry, ‘quality’ means the
combination of all attributes of a particular food item, like
appearance, flavor, nutritional content

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SUGAR QUALITY PARAMETER
The following parameters determine the purity, color and texture of the sugar;
• Ash Content
Ash refers to all the inorganic components that are naturally present in the cane or
beet.
• Polarization
Polarization (Pol) measures the purity of the sugar in transparent form. The higher the
polarization, the purer the sugar is; the lesser the polarization, the more impurities are
present in the sugar.
• Moisture Content
These determine the amount of water present in the sugar. Reducing moisture in sugar
is very important, as sugar can absorb moisture from the air and can ‘cake’ if it
becomes too moist

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SUGAR QUALITY PARAMETER CONTD.
• Crystal size and Uniformity
Crystal size, also known as ‘screen size’, is important because is the sugar has
irregularly sized grains the refining process is hampered.
• Filterability
Filterability is how easy it is for sugar to pass through a porous material,
sugar with low filterability reduces the refined product(sugar) of the refinery
leading to financial losses over time.
• Decolorization
This is the removal of viscous brown syrup (Molasses) from refined sugar. The
color is dependent on the residual molasses that are not removed in the refining
process.

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SUGAR QUALITY PARAMETER CONTD.

Table 1. shows specific requirements for refined white sugar in accordance to East African Standard.

S/N Characteristic Requirement Method of test

limit

1 Polarization 99.8 ICUMSA Method GS 2/3-1

2 Moisture content (loss on drying for 3 h at 105 0.1 ICUMSA Method 2/1/3/9-15

C ± 2 oC
o

3 Ash content, %m/m max 0.04 ICUMSA Method GS 2/3-17

4 Color, in ICUMSA units at 4420 nm max 60 ICUMSA Method GS 2/3-10

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CONCLUSION

Regardless of any method used in the production of sugar, one factor that must be studied and
understood in detail is the effect that certain substances cause in the execution of the said method
and that can prevent a direct measure of the physiochemical properties of the products produced.
A quality product would be obtained if the recipe of quality parameters is duly followed and with
this, there would be a high profit and a lower challenge in marketing field.

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REFERENCES

• Jenkins. G.H. (1966). Introduction to Cane Sugar Technology. Elsevier Science, 2013, 1483277976 496 p.

• N. M. Nawi, G. Chen, and T. Jensen, “Visible and shortwave near infrared spectroscopy to predict sugarcane

quality from clear and raw juice samples,” Engineers Australia, 2013.

• E. Ongin’jo and C. O. Olweny (2011). Determination of optimum harvesting age for sugarcane ratoon crop at the

Kenyan Coast, Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology Research, ISSN : 2231 –3168 .

• C. Wang, Z. Chen, and J. H. Wang, “Analysis of cane juice quality indexes of main sugarcane varieties in

Zhanjiang area,” Sugar Crops of China, no. 4, 2007.

• EAST AFRICAN STANDARD (2019). Refined White Sugar-Specification

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