MIJARES, DENNESA LUZ D.

ChE 173 - REPORT

BS ChE IV
24 NOVEMBER 2016

The Sugar Industry

It’s a Chemical Engineering undergraduate’s dream to tour a plant and have a real life
experience on how the discussed equipment in class are being used and how the different unit
operations are being applied in processing the product from the given raw material. In our case,
our class made a plant visit at the Universal Robina Corporation, a sugar industry, situated in San
Enrique, Passi, Iloilo City. It can produce 10,000 sacks of sugar every day. It has a total of 283
employees. We were not able to get the number of employees for every specific work because
the person-in-charge was not around. It has a plant capacity of 4,500 tons of cane per day. The
juice from the cane is the raw material for sugar production, while the plant residue left after the
juice was extracted, commonly known as bagasse is the by-product and it is used as a fuel for
boilers which is also used for power generation.

For the sugar production, raw cane has to undergo processes which are cane handling,
cane preparation, mill extraction, boiling and power generation, raw processing, distribution and
quality control to achieve the desired product. 4,500 tons of cane are being processed every day.
They are being wheeled in bundles by trucks and passes through a weigh bridge for weight
determination. The canes are then unloaded in a cane conveyor for cane preparation wherein
they pass through two sets of cane knives and one unigrator which are used to cut and shred the
canes into smaller pieces. They are then conveyed to four sets of mill for juice extraction. The
bagasse, which is the by-product of the mill is utilized as fuel for boilers and for power generation.
URC has two JTE boilers each having a steam rate capacity of 60 tons per hour, where the steam
produced is used to drive a turbine-generator set resulting to 2.5 megawatts of electricity. Going
back to the production of sugar, the juice being extracted from the mill is pumped to the process
house passing through heaters at 220 degrees Fahrenheit where lime is added to neutralize the
natural acidity of the juice and attracts non-sugar plant material like wax, fats, and gums from
the juice which will fall out of the sucrose solution and will settle to the bottom. The mixed juice
is then pumped to the clarifiers to separate out the solids suspended in the cane juice. Clarified
juice proceeds in the evaporator where water is separated from the syrup. The concentrated
syrup is then transferred to the vacuum pans turning it to massecuites, a suspension of sugar
crystals in a mother liquor and where A, B, or C molasses are derived from. The massecuites are
then processed to the centrifuges to separate molasses from sugar crystals. Molasses are
transported to molasses tanks which are then used in other forms while sugar crystals are being
dried to remove the remaining moisture and is already the finished product. It then proceeds to
seeding to separate fine and large crystals after, they are bagged into 50 kg per sack and is ready
for distribution. The sacks are stacked in pallets and stored in sugar warehouse.

URC contributes little to pollution because they recycle their wastes. The bagasse is being
converted into fuel which supplies the electricity for the whole plant. The suspended particles
from the clarifiers proceed to a mud tank then to a mud mixer going through a rotary vacuum
filter to filter the cake and finally, to a mud press resulting to a mud cake which they give to
farmers for fertilizers. Molasses which are two-thirds as sweet as regular sugar can be sold and
be a substitute in recipes that may need brown sugar or honey or maple syrup. Waste water are
being treated in three digestive ponds and two aerated pond. But during our visit, the engineer
in-charge was around to give us information on how wastewater treatment was done. The person
who was present during our tour said that the treated water is being washed off to the river.

In summary, the plant tour was very informative and it gave us knowledge on how sugar
production is done. We’ve also witnessed how the equipment were arranged and used to process
the raw material to achieve the desired result. We’ve also seen how this sugar industry recycles
their waste and use it for a better cause which lessens its bad effect to the environment. In short,
URC is very environment friendly. Even though the place was extremely hot, the air smelled of
molasses, machines were too loud that we have to request the tour guide to repeat his/her
explanation, and we didn’t have enough time to explore the place, it was all worth it. The trip
was educational and it adds up to our options for possible work place in the future.
References:

Universal Robina Corporation

Refining and Processing Sugar, The Sugar Association

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Sugar.html