How do you extract sugar from sugar cane or sugar beet?

Answer 1

The basic process

Sugar cane must be crushed to extract the juice. The crushing process must break up the hard nodes of the cane and flatten the stems. The juice is collected, filtered and sometimes treated and then boiled to drive off the excess water. The dried cane residue (bagasse) is often used as fuel for this process. The remaining liquid is allowed to set into a solid mass known as jaggery, gur, chancaca or panela.

Answer 2

You first wash the cane/sugar beet. Then you crush them to get as much juice out as possible. This juice contains a lot of sugar, but at this stage there is also a lot of water (hence why it is juice rather than a solid). The water content of this juice must then be reduced to result in sugar crystals.

Most of the time this juice will be simmered on a very low heat, in order to reduce the water content. Eventually this will result in sugar crystals. However the sugar will burn towards the end of the simmering stage, so the solution is only usually simmered to reduce the bulk of the water content, but the simmering is discontinued when the water content is significantly reduced. At this stage, the water is just left to evaporate off by itself, to avoid caramelising the sugar.

When all the water is evaporated off, you will be left with unrefined sugar (a golden brown type of sugar). Other types of sugar can be achieved by distilling the juice from the sugar cane/beet before it is heated.

Answer 3

Sugar mills begin the process of extracting sucrose from the sugar cane by washing the stalks of cane and cutting them into shreds with rotating knives

Answer 4

The beets are cooked