Quantification of sugar losses in a sugar manufacturing plant, as one of the parameters for evaluating the technical performance of the plant: a research study carried out at kamuli sugar limited

Abstract

This research concentrated on assessing and controlling the operational loss of sugar in various sugar byproducts during cane processing in cane sugar factory. In the study, factors associated with operational loss were discussed. Data was collected from Kamuli Sugar Limited (KSL) which is situated in Kamuli District of Uganda. Operational sucrose loss is divided into two major categories namely, determined losses and undetermined losses. Determined losses are those which can be easily quantified through lab analysis, such as loss in molasses, filter cake and bagasse. Unlike determined losses, undetermined losses are difficult to estimate directly but rather by factory material balance. They include; spills, leaks, open cane cutting, crushed cane by lorries and tractors at the cane yard and cane eaten the workers, among others. The sugar losses that occur in any sugar plant in a season of crushing is one of the important terms of assessing the technical performance of the sugar plant. Main objective of this study is to find out various losses in operations in detail.

After analyzing the data from KSL, it was found that the operational loss of sugar in bagasse, molasses, and press-mud cake and in unknown losses is 2.12% of the total cane crushed and out of the total sugar loss at Kamuli Sugar Limited (KSL), sugar loss in bagasse is 24.8% while sugar loss in filter cake is 2.8%, sugar loss in molasses is 65.4% and sugar undetermined loss is 7.1% respectively.

This implied that KSL loses a significant amount of sucrose but within the pre-determined bounds of less than 2.20 pol% cane crushed for plants installed after 1994 as reported by (Sharma & Kumar, 2015). Sugar loss in molasses and bagasse was high than others, it was concluded that, the use of three laws of sucrose loss in molasses coupled with optimization of boiling house operations would result in minimized loss of sucrose in molasses. Also, improving extraction would result in minimum sucrose loss in bagasse. And balancing the percentage of water sprayed and amount of bagacillo used during filtration of muddy juice would result in minimum sucrose loss in filter cake.