The use of interim products of sugar beet processing to produce a marketable product

Abstract

Sugar beets processing is aimed at obtaining one marketable product - white sugar. Other useful constituents of beet are converted into production waste. Valuable components of the feedstock are removed along with production residuals - mineral and nitrogenous compounds, organic acids and many others. Yellow sugar is the interim product of the white sugar production. Usually, it is not produced as a commercial product. The main goal of this research is to study features of yellow sugar and the possibility to use it as a base for sugar-containing products with functional properties. The feasibility to increase the yellow sugar quality by using affination – removing impurities from a surface, has been explored. The process of affination allows to achieve the final product’s purity 98.0-98.7% and chromaticity less than 140 ICUMSA units. The affination process causes decrease in the number of microbes and volume of mucous-producing microflora in yellow sugar, while thermophilic microorganisms, yeasts, and molds completely disappear. The process of affination causes a decrease in the amount of mineral substances. Despite the volume of minerals in affined yellow sugar still being much higher than in refined (white) sugar, acceptable levels of toxic substances are not exceeded. Yellow sugar after the process of affination contains less sucrose than refined sugar and keeps partially mineral and organic composition of sugar beet. Within the research, we produced the marketable product with enriched composition from affined sugar and sugar syrup that has concentration 70%. The rosehip powder has been used to enrich the product composition, the volume of the rosehip powder was between 1% and 5%.