Sugar
PEF for sugar production
Product examples: Sugar beet sucrose, sugar cane
Aim PEF treatment: Cell disintegration, structure modification
Sucrose extraction
By permeabilizing cell membranes, PEF enables tissue softening and enhanced mass transport, resulting in improved extraction of sucrose from sugar beets, higher product quality and purity and increased process capacity. Sugar beet processing becomes more homogeneous with pulsed electric field processing, evening the structure and resulting in the reduction of seasonal variation in raw materials. As a result, we measure an improved refining efficiency and a significant reduction of the energy input and the water use. A related process is inulin extraction from chicory root, see: Dietary fiber.
Benefits PEF
- Targeted and controllable structural modification enabled by permeabilizing cell membranes
- Enhanced product handling by tissue softening
- Reduction of cutting force
- Improved extraction and refining and increased process capacity
- Higer extraction and refining yields
- Enhanced juice and sucrose purity
- Higher process efficiency by large reductions in energy, labor and running costs
- Continuous process and rapid technique
- Small equipment footprint, quick start up of the process
- Low energy requirement
More information
Pulsemaster has developed a range of industrial scale equipment – named Conditioner – with treatment capacities from 1,000 kg/h to 50,000 kg/h (110,000 lb/h) for cell disintegration of sugar beets. On a commercial scale total costs of 1 Euro/ton (0.1 Eurocent per kg / 0.056 US Dollarcent per lb) have to be expected. There are practically no size limitations.