Improving the extraction efficiency of sugar cane mills using perforated rollers with longitudinal channels

Abstract

Introduction Sugarcane mills are considered special equipment for extracting the sugar solution from the sugarcane plant by applying different pressures and forces to the fibers and bagasse as they pass through the mills. The factories of the Egyptian Sugar Company tended to increase the capacity of the mills to reduce the cost of sugar production, which led to the phenomenon of the juice floating, and this led to a loss of juice due to the bagasse reabsorbing it after it left the mills. In this research, we studied increasing the juice drainage area by changing the mill rollers and producing perforated rollers with longitudinal channels to increase the flow of the extracted juice. This was applied to Czech-made Skoda mills located in Deshna sugar factories. Extraction experiments were conducted on Czech mills with a diameter of 300 mm and a length of 400 mm during the 2023 juice season in Deshna sugar factories. Extraction experiments were carried out on 15 samples of both modified and unmodified mills under the same operating conditions, with a difference in the weight of the samples. The results were positive, as the extraction of the modified mills was better than the extraction of the unmodified mills, with a difference reaching 3.23% when the capacity of the mills was increased to 50%.