Reduction of Turbidity of Beet Sugar Solutions by Mechanical and Chemical Treatment

Abstract

Abstract The presence of practically non-dissolvable small particles in sugar solutions can cause haze during application and has to be minimal. Intermediate storage of thick sugar juice becomes increasingly common practice. In particular juices treated with anti-scale agents appear to be prone to turbidity development. This work on turbidity mitigation reports results on both laboratory and industrial level experiments. Different filter aids were tested and led to reduced turbidity levels. At industrial and lab scale reductions in the order of 30–54% and 50–70% were achieved respectively, which however remains insufficient to resolve the problem. The chemical mitigation by reduction of the hardness of the juice either by sodium carbonate or by ion exchanger treatment was investigated. While the reduction of the calcium concentration by dosing of sodium carbonate turned out to be basically possible, this remains less practical than the utilization of cation exchangers. Furthermore, it was found that application of anti-scale agents causes a reduction on the particle sizes that are found in thick juice samples after 2 months storage. Turbidity values of these samples were, independent of dosage and type of anti-scale agent, twice as high as in reference samples.