Investigation into the Filterability of Raw Sugars from Different Geographical Regions of the World

This study was carried out at Alkhaleej Sugar Refinery in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The study aimed to find out the correlation between the filterability and slurry resistance value so fraw meltliquor in the carbonation sugar refinery and the raw sugar quality. The investigation utilized 5 raw sugar samples originated from various regions of the world comprising three quality groups namely; low pol sugar (LP) originated from Thailand, very high pol sugar (VHP) originated from Brazil, South-Africa, Sudan, India, and very high pol sugar (VVHP) originated from Brazil. The filterability and the slurry resistance tests were used as the main determining factors for the evaluation. The filterability of refined sugar (consideredas100%) was used as a reference value for comparison. The results of the experiments showed that the filterability of low pol raw sugar was only about 20% from that of refined sugar. Whereas the filterability values for VHP and VVHP sugars ranged between 40% to 80% from that of refined sugar. In addition, the slurry resistance values for VHP and VVHP sugars in the laboratory were 0.76 and 0.64 respectively compared to 0.74 and 0.48 in the refinery production line. It was also observed that there is a close similarity between laboratory filterability and slurry resistance with the actual refinery filtration process swhich suggests that the laboratory filterability and slurry resistance tests could be used as tool to predict the behavior of the refinery filtration process for similar qualities of raw sugar.