Process for beet sugar production

In a process for manufacturing beet sugar comprising purifying diffused beet juice, concentrating the purified beet juice, recovering sucrose from the concentrated beet juice in a boiling and centrifugal separation step, adding quicklime to the molasses remaining after the centrifugal separation of sucrose from the massecuite to produce calcium saccharate and returning the resultant saccharate cake to the diffused beet juice-purifying step, the improvement which comprises

• a. adding .alpha.-galactosidase to the molasses remaining after the centrifugal separation of sucrose thereby hydrolyzing the raffinose present in the molasses into sucrose and galactose before said quicklime addition;
• b. continuously adding quicklime to the resultant raffinose hydrolyzate to produce calcium saccharate;
• c. continuously withdrawing from the calcium saccharate-forming step substantially the same amount of the saccharate-containing solution as the amount of raffinose hydrolyzate being fed into the calcium saccharate-forming step and forwarding the saccharate cake obtained by filtering and washing said saccharate-containing solution to the diffused beet juice-purifying step;
• and
• d. at the same time, continuously withdrawing from the calcium saccharate-forming step a second volume of the saccharate-containing solution which is three to ten times the volume of the raffinose hydrolyzate being fed into the calcium saccharate-forming step, cooling said second withdrawn solution and returning the cooled solution to the calcium saccharate-forming step.