Process for production of purified beet juice for sugar manufacture
AssigneeTate & Lyle Limited
InventorsRichard C. Reisig, Jatal D. Mannapperuma
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Abstract
The present invention relates to a process for producing sugar from beets, comprising the steps of: (a) macerating beets or pieces thereof; (b) mechanically separating juice from the macerated beets; and (c) membrane filtering the separated juice, producing a retentate and a permeate. The mechanical extraction of juice can be done on a moving porous vacuum filtration belt with countercurrent flow of macerated beets and water. The pH of the vacuum extracted juice can be adjusted to at least about 7 by addition of sodium hydroxide. This process does not use conventional beet diffusion. No lime and no carbon dioxide are required to be contacted with the juice or the permeate in this process.
Claims17
A process for producing sugar from beets, comprising the steps of:
- (a) macerating beets or pieces thereof;
- (b) mechanically separating juice from the macerated beets at a temperature of at least about 80 °C;
- and
- (c) membrane filtering the separated juice, producing a retentate and a permeate.
A process for producing sugar from beets, comprising the steps of:
- (a) cutting sugar beets into pieces;
- (b) macerating the beet pieces;
- (c) mechanically extracting juice from the macerated beets at a temperature of at least about 80 °C;
- (d) membrane filtering the extracted juice, producing a retentate and a permeate;
- (e) subjecting the retentate to diafiltration, thereby producing a dialfiltration filtrate that is enriched in sugar compared to the retentate;
- (f) combining the dialfiltration filtrate and the permeate from the membrane filtration, thereby producing a combined juice;
- (g) concentrating the combined juice by reverse osmosis, thereby producing a concetrated solution;
- and
- (h) evaporating the concentrated solution and crystallizing sucrose therefrom.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.