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ARS Home » Southeast Area » New Orleans, Louisiana » Southern Regional Research Center » Commodity Utilization Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #335782
Research Project: Developing Technologies that Enable Growth and Profitability in the Commercial Conversion of Sugarcane, Sweet Sorghum, and Energy Beets into Sugar, Advanced Biofuels, and Bioproducts

Location: Commodity Utilization Research

Title: ICUMSA general subject 7 cane sugar processing report

Author
item Eggleston, Gillian

Submitted to: Meeting Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/15/2016
Publication Date: 9/1/2017
Citation: Eggleston, G. 2017. ICUMSA general subject 7 cane sugar processing report. In: Proceedings of the International Commission for Uniform Methods in Sugar Amalysis Conference, June 8-11, 2016, Warsaw, Poland. p. 107-130.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: In recent years there has been a world-wide increase in starch concentrations mostly because of one or a combination of the following: (i) increased mechanical processing of green sugarcane; (ii) varying environmental conditions; and (iii) newer sugarcane varieties with higher starch content. Many international refineries have now implemented a penalty for high starch concentrations in raw sugars. Starch occurs in the sugarcane crop as insoluble granules that consist of amylose (linear) and amylopectin (branched) glucopolysaccharides, and these granules are extracted into factory juices by tandem-milling or diffusion. Until 2013, it was considered that starch was mostly solubilized by the end of the heat-intensive clarification and evaporation stages in the sugarcane factory. It has since been unequivocally proved, however, that this is not true. Insoluble starch that is not totally solubilized during the factory clarification process persists into syrups, massecuites, molasses, raw sugars and even refined sugars, sometimes at considerable amounts. This occurrence is worse when high starch sugarcane is delivered to the factory such as during the 2011 and 2012 processing seasons in Louisiana, USA. The latter caused up to 50 mg/kg doses of intermediate-temperature stable amylase to be added to the last evaporator, which still did not control starch concentrations in raw sugars to below penalty levels (250 mg/kg by ICUMSA GS1-17 method).