sokerintuotannossa

Sokerintuotannossa refers to the process of producing sugar. This generally involves extracting sugar from plants, most commonly sugarcane or sugar beets. The raw material undergoes several stages to refine the sugar into a usable crystalline form.

The initial step is harvesting the crop. Sugarcane stalks are typically cut and transported to a mill, while sugar beets are pulled from the ground. At the mill or processing plant, the plants are cleaned and prepared. For sugarcane, this involves crushing and shredding to extract a juice containing sucrose. Sugar beets are usually sliced into thin pieces called cossettes, which are then leached with hot water to dissolve the sugar.

The extracted juice, whether from sugarcane or beets, is then purified. This often involves heating and adding lime to precipitate impurities. The clarified juice is then concentrated by evaporation, a process that removes water and increases the sugar concentration, forming a syrup.

Crystallization is the next crucial step. The concentrated syrup is further evaporated until sugar crystals begin to form. This process is carefully controlled to produce crystals of a desired size. The resulting mixture of sugar crystals and syrup, known as massecuite, is then centrifuged. This separates the sugar crystals from the remaining molasses, which is a byproduct containing residual sugars and impurities.

The separated sugar crystals are then dried and often screened to sort them by size. Further refining processes can be employed to achieve different grades of sugar, such as white granulated sugar, which typically involves additional washing, decolorization, and recrystallization steps to remove any remaining color and impurities. The entire process aims to isolate and purify sucrose from its natural sources.