Processing - Crystallization

Thick Juice is mixed with High and Low Raw Sugar to produce Standard Liquor which is filtered and sent up to the vacuum pan floor for crystallization. The Standard Liquor is boiled until it reaches super-saturation at which point the Liquor is seeded by the addition of fondant. The seed crystals are grown to the desired size and number by careful control of temperature, feed liquor addition, steam, and vacuum. The contents of the pan, fillmass, are dropped from the vacuum pans to centrifugals which rotate at high speed to separate the sugar crystals from the surrounding syrup. The sugar is then dried and weighed before heading out to the silos for storage or directly to the package and bulk loading stations. The resulting granulated sugar is 99.9% pure sucrose. The syrup which was spun off contains sugar as well as non-sugars not removed during juice purification. This syrup goes through a similar crystallization process as mentioned above. The spin off syrup for the second boiling is sent through the crystallization process a third time. The syrup from the third boiling is called Molasses. Although molasses contains approximately 50% sugar, the non-sugar concentration is high enough to make it not economically feasible at this plant to continue crystallization. Molasses (Byproduct) is sold primarily as an animal feed additive.