EMERGING TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS SUITABLE FOR VIABLE COTTAGE SUGAR PRODUCTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Abstract

Unlike the large scale (vacuum pan) industries, the economic viability and growth or expansion of sugar production by Cottage industries in most developing countries is not favourable. Among other technological factors and problems such as inefficient juice extraction and low crystallization rate of syrup were identified as major contributing factors for the inefficient overall performance of cottage sugar factories in many developing countries As such, two new innovations: cane cutter/juice expeller to cut sugarcane and extract juice efficiently, and combined air and water cool crystalliser, to increase the crystallization rate, were developed to replace the older technologies for cottage sugar production. In the present study, the cottage level sugar production plant, developed at the National Cereals. Research Institute, Badeggi, Nigeria, was used to conduct the research work. The former set of machineries using rollers to extract sugarcane juice was used to process approximately 1,000 kg of sugarcane. The new innovative technology was used for extracting juice from the same quantity of sugarcane(1000kg). Also about 1,000 litres of masscuit were crystallized separately in the air cool and combined water/ air cool crystallizers and the data obtained were analyzed. Results indicated that the juice extraction efficiency of the new technology (Cane cutter/juice expeller) was 95% compared to 56% in older methods. This represented an increased juice extraction of about 76% per kg cane. Consequently, sugar recovery also improved abruptly from 5.5% to 8.5%. All these indices resulted to the viability of cottage sugar production as clearly indicated in the economic analysis. In addition, the bagasse temperature immediately after extracting the juice was recorded as high as 65°C, thus it was used as source of heat energy for open pan boilers directly without additional energy and cost requirement for drying-