About Jagdish Sugarcane Crystallizer
Crystallization is the next step in the manufacture of sugar. Crystallization takes place in a single-stage vacuum pan. The syrup is evaporated until saturated with sugar. As soon as the saturation point has been exceeded, small grains of sugar are added to the pan, or “strike.”
These small grains, called seed, serve as nuclei for the formation of sugar crystals. (Seed grain is formed by adding 56 ounces [1,600 grams] of white sugar into the bowl of a slurry machine and mixing with 3.3 parts of a liquid mixture: 70 percent methylated spirit and 30 percent glycerin. The machine runs at 200 RPM for 15 hours.)
Additional syrup is added to the strike and evaporated so that the original crystals that were formed are allowed to grow in size.
The growth of the crystals continues until the pan is full. When sucrose concentration reaches the desired level, the dense mixture of syrup and sugar crystals, called massecuite, is discharged into large containers known as crystallizers.
Crystallization continues in the crystallizers as the massecuite is slowly stirred and cooled. Massecuite from the mixers is allowed to flow into centrifuges, where the thick syrup, or molasses, is separated from the raw sugar by centrifugal force.