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![Flow diagram of new sugar mill and sugar refinery based on the SAT process [27]. Although the idea to use ultrafiltration for clarified juice was studied since early 80's, a large-scale system was installed in Puunene, Hawaii, plant only several years ago. According to this method, called the new Applexion process (Figure 6), the clarification of raw juice is achieved by membrane filtration followed by softening. The UF system comprises 940 m 2 of Kerasesep membrane having a membrane porosity of 0.02 µm. The juice softening system comprises two columns of strong cationic resin and is designed to remove at least 80% of the hardness in filtered clarified juice. The benefits derived from these two additional unit operations are mainly: producing higher quality sugar, increasing sugar recovery, reducing chemical usage in evaporator cleaning and reducing steam consumption [30]. An industrial plant has been processing 1000 gpm of clarified juice since 1994. As expected, it has been running 800 days, then due to partial erosion, the membrane performances declined and part of them has to be changed [30].](profile/Ali-Kamel-Abdel-Rahman/publication/283349075/figure/fig5/AS:669206261538823@1536562614200/Flow-diagram-of-new-sugar-mill-and-sugar-refinery-based-on-the-SAT-process-27-Although.png)
Flow diagram of new sugar mill and sugar refinery based on the SAT process [27]. Although the idea to use ultrafiltration for clarified juice was studied since early 80's, a large-scale system was installed in Puunene, Hawaii, plant only several years ago. According to this method, called the new Applexion process (Figure 6), the clarification of raw juice is achieved by membrane filtration followed by softening. The UF system comprises 940 m 2 of Kerasesep membrane having a membrane porosity of 0.02 µm. The juice softening system comprises two columns of strong cationic resin and is designed to remove at least 80% of the hardness in filtered clarified juice. The benefits derived from these two additional unit operations are mainly: producing higher quality sugar, increasing sugar recovery, reducing chemical usage in evaporator cleaning and reducing steam consumption [30]. An industrial plant has been processing 1000 gpm of clarified juice since 1994. As expected, it has been running 800 days, then due to partial erosion, the membrane performances declined and part of them has to be changed [30].
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![Figure 4. Schematic of press water treatment with RO/NF [26].](profile/Ali-Kamel-Abdel-Rahman/publication/283349075/figure/fig4/AS:669206261538822@1536562614169/Schematic-of-press-water-treatment-with-RO-NF-26_Q320.jpg)
Although, the conventional production of white sugar from either cane or beet has been well established over the years, the sugar industry has to accommodate itself with the new environmental regulations and to upgrade the quality of sugar with optimizing the production cost. This could be achieved by using new techniques such as membrane filtratio...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... the SAT process will improve yield by avoiding sucrose destruction due to low pH and improve product quality [27]. The SAT process can also be integrated into a raw sugar mill (-the New Raw Sugar Mill‖) as shown in Figure 5. The new raw sugar mill will thereby have the capability to produce food grade sugar for direct sale, as well as a very low color (VLC) sugar of 500 I.C.U. or an ultra low color (ULC) sugar of 200 I.C.U. ...
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The issues of purification of secondary waters of industrial production have an important place and are relevant in the environmental activities of all food and chemical industries. For cleaning the transporter-washing water of beet-sugar production the key role is played by the equipment of treatment plants. A wide variety of wastewater treatment...
Citations
... Membrane processes like microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, ion-exchange or electrodialysis can be used for decolorization and removal of other impurities Hamachi et al., 2003). Recently, the use of membrane filtration in the food industry is widely accepted due to its energy-efficient, simplicity of operation, and scalability (Abbara, 2015). Moreover, membrane filtration is used in clarification and decolorization specifically in the production of juices with high quality, natural taste, and free of additives (Almandoz et al., 2010;Shi et al., 2019). ...
The conventional process for producing white sugar is energy intensive and inefficient. This paper discusses an intensified sugar refining process that utilizes ultrafiltration (UF) membrane technology as an alternative to a chemical purification process to remove color and simplify further refining. The inclusion of sodium bicarbonate
combined with UF filtration improved the occlusion index of the cane juice, by removing excess calcium ions and polysaccharides, which led to improvements in crystal growth rate, crystal size, and sugar color. The UF permeate could be directly boiled and crystallized to produce United States Food Grade white sugar. Pilot studies of the UF process achieved a refined sugar of 83 ICUMSA from a clarified syrup of 11,425 ICUMSA and 85% purity. Application of a UF membrane system in sugar mills can eliminate various refining processes such as
affination, phosphatation, and/or granular carbon/bone char/ion exchange for decolorization. Therefore, the UF-assisted process would produce high-quality food-grade sugar products meeting commercial specifications with considerable savings in both capital and operating costs.
Application of membrane filtration in sugar production is attractive because it can reduce the usage of chemicals, produce high-quality clarified juice, as well as obtain various high value-added products. However, some technical problems, such as insufficient membrane performance, high sucrose loss in membrane retentate, severe membrane fouling, and incomplete cleaning protocols, limit its industrial applications. In order to facilitate the development of membrane technology for sugar production, this review summarizes recent progress on the applications of membrane filtration in different stages of sugar production as well as the integrated membrane processes for various purposes. Moreover, some important issues including membrane fouling, membrane cleaning, economic feasibility and engineering problems of the membrane-based sugar production process are discussed. Finally, the existing challenges and future research prospects for the industrialization of this green technique are pointed out.
