Aksu Kant LLP is the only sugar plant in Kazakhstan that has its own raw material base and grows sugar beet, wheat, alfalfa, and the Company's plans include the inclusion of soybean, barley, vegetables and other crops in the crop rotation.
The plant has one of the largest land banks in the region - more than 5000 hectares; it is planned to increase land allotments annually.
Products of the company's agricultural divisions are sugar beets, winter wheat, alfalfa.
Our Company has its own Service and Procurement Center, equipped with modern technology, serving its own land, as well as providing services to beet growers of Almaty region.
The employees of the agricultural division are highly qualified specialists. The plans of the plant include training and professional development of agricultural producers of Almaty region.
Historically, in all developed sugar markets of the world, the plant is the core of the industry - the distributor of technology, seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, machinery, etc. In the future, Aksu Kant LLP plans to distribute pesticides, highly productive seeds of sugar beet and crops included in the crop rotation, as well as mineral and organic fertilizers for the crop, reducing the need for regional beet growers in working capital and the choice of products, increase in acreage.
To support agricultural producers in the region, Aksu Kant LLP launched a program for the distribution of highly effective preparations - herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and microfertilizers produced by Schelkovo Agrokhim. Shchelkovo Agrokhim is one of the world leaders in the production of chemical products for the protection and growth of sugar beet.
To deal with the issues of the industry Aksu Sugar Plant, together with active farmers, a public group and JSC RIR SEC Zhetisu, the Association of Producers and Processors of Sugar Beet and Soybean was established, which actively works to protect and promote industry issues.
Sugar production refers to continuous-flow mechanized production with a high level of automation of basic processes.
The technologies of sugar production existing at Aksu Sugar Plant ensure the output of products that meet the requirements of the current GOST standards and specifications. The enterprise is provided with normative-technical and technological documentation for manufactured products and raw materials and auxiliary materials used in production.
Extraction. Root crops are washed, peeled, weighed and sent to chips. The resulting intermediate product is loaded into a diffuser, where it is mixed with water and heated, thus obtaining a diffuse juice with a 15% sucrose content.
Purification of diffuse juice. Lime milk is added to the mass and several cleaning steps are carried out. Evaporation of the liquid. Under the influence of high temperature, water gradually evaporates. The result is a syrup in which about 50% of the volume is sucrose.
Crystallization. Syrup is successively supplied to centrifuges, fillmass distributors and vacuum aggregates. Having passed the listed stages, the raw material turns into sugar, which the consumer is used to seeing.
A modern sugar beet plant is a large industrial enterprise equipped with high-performance equipment, fully electrified, with a high degree of mechanization of all heavy and labor-intensive work, partial automation of production processes and favorable working conditions. The production capacity of individual sugar plants for the processing of beets reaches 6-9 thousand tons per day, while the industry average is about 2.5 thousand tons per day.
Sugar is a food product derived mainly from sugar beet and cane sugar. Available in the form of granulated sugar and refined sugar. The caloric content of 100 grams of sugar is about 400 kcal. The most important indicator of the quality of sugar is its color, which in units of the Stammer should not exceed 1.0. Regardless of raw materials, the sensation of sweetness of sugar is determined solely by the size of the surface of the crystals and, consequently, by the speed of melting in the mouth. Slow-numbing large crystals do not seem to be sweet enough, while small and especially powdered sugar have a sugary sweet taste.
Sugar beet is a biennial plant of the haze family. In the first year of its development, succulent sugar-rich root crops with a wide overgrown, side roots and a powerful basal rosette of leaves - tops, but without flowers and seeds, are formed from the seeds originally sown. It is these roots that, after trimming the tops (together with the upper part of the root head), as well as removing the shank and part of the roots, are used as raw materials for sugar beet production. The average yield of root crops is 25 ... 40 t / ha, on irrigated lands of Ukraine - over 60 t / ha. The sugar content in beets is 16 ... 18% by weight of the root, sometimes under favorable conditions - 20%. The length of the growing season ranges from 150 to 180 days. The sum of average daily temperatures during the growing season is 2400 ... 2800 ° C, sufficient moisture is required.
The formation of sugar in beets occurs by the initial synthesis of the simplest carbohydrates (glucose and fructose) from carbon dioxide and water in plant leaves containing chlorophyll under the action of sunlight.
Mass digging of root crops is carried out from the second half of September. The beets delivered by vehicles are stored in clamps (burta) before processing. For the prevention of putrefactive processes, beets are sprayed with lime milk in clamps, and sprinkled with water in hot weather.
Root crops in clamps continue to live, consuming oxygen from the air and emitting carbon dioxide, as well as water vapor.
Cane raw sugar, produced in India, Brazil and Cuba, is the product of the processing of juice, squeezed out of the stalks of sugar cane. The sucrose content in the juice is 97 ... 98%, and in the cane stalks - 12 ... 15%, the yield is 40 ... 60 t / ha. Pressed cane juice is subjected to chemical treatment with a small amount of lime, phosphoric acid and sulfur dioxide. In the filtered form enters the evaporator installation. After condensation, the syrup from the residue is boiled until sugar crystals are separated, which are separated in the centrifuges in the form of raw sugar.
Plants that produce sugar, are large, equipped with high-production equipment. The capacity of individual beet sugar refineries for processing beets reaches 6 ... 9 thousand tons per day, and on average 2.5 thousand tons per day. Sugar beet production – massm and flow. In it, in a single production flow, the main technological processes and intermediate operations for the processing of beets are carried out with the production of one type of mass commodity product - white sugar. By-products are pulp and molasses.
In order to protect sucrose from decomposition, all technological processes are conducted at a temperature not exceeding 90 ... 100 ° C (only in the first evaporation bodies up to 120 ... 125 ° C) and in an alkaline medium (except for the weakly acid reaction of diffuse juice).
The duration of the production cycle from receipt of beets to obtaining white raw sugar is not more than 12 ... 16 hours, and taking into account the processing of all the molasses and yellow sugars in the grocery compartment - 36 ... 42 hours.
The most important stages of sugar beet production technology are the following:
grinding (cutting) beets into chips and obtaining juice from it in a diffuse manner; juice cleaning; evaporation of water from the juice to produce a syrup; boiling the syrup into a crystalline mass - massecuite I and the subsequent separation of this mass by centrifuging to white crystalline sugar and molasses; boiling the molasses in the massecuite II, additional crystallization of it, and centrifuging to obtain brown sugar and the final molasses - production waste when operating according to the scheme with two massecuites.
In the case of work under the scheme with three massecuite molasses from the massecuite II is not final. Once again, it is boiled down for massecuite III, from which, after crystallization and centrifugation, one more yellow sugar is obtained and already as a waste of production - molasses.
Purification (affination) of the last yellow sugar, dissolution of yellow sugars in the juice (clearing) with the return of the resulting solution - clearing of the syrup. In addition to these technological operations, auxiliary processes are carried out: the production of lime and carbonated (carbon dioxide) gas, necessary for cleaning the juice, by burning sulfur of sulfite (sulfur) gas for purifying juice and syrup.
At some plants, additional technological operations are carried out, which are, as it were, a continuation of the main production processes - drying of beet pulp and production of animal feed on its basis (enrichment of pulp with additives), and obtaining citric acid from molasses microbiologically.
All technological operations are carried out in three main sections of the plant: beet processing, including the supply of beets to the plant; cleaning, including evaporation and production of lime, carbonated and sulphated gases; food - cooking-crystallization and whitewash.
Sugar extraction from beet chips
The extraction of sugar from beet chips is carried out by leaching with warm water and diffusion juice and is based on the phenomena of diffusion and osmosis through the permeable walls of sugar beet cells.
Leaching occurs in diffusion batteries consisting of 12 to 16 diffusers. Diffusers, which are metal cylinders with a capacity of 5-10 m3, are equipped with devices for loading chips and unloading pulp. The contents of the diffusers are heated by steam circulating through the pipes inside the diffuser. The temperature in the diffuser reaches 60 ° C and more. At this temperature, the protoplasm of the cells coagulates, which facilitates the leaching of sugar from them.
Leaching of sugar in the diffusion battery is carried out gradually. Diffusion juice, moving from one diffuser to another, is gradually saturated with sugar until the sugar content in the juice approaches as much as possible to the sugar content of the beets.
The first battery cone is loaded with chips and filled with warm water filling the entire space between the chips in the cone.
If the sugar content of freshly loaded beet chips is 18% (it can be a little more and less), then after leaching some of the sugar with water and achieving diffusion equilibrium, the sugar in the chips and water is evenly distributed and the sugar content of the chips and the resulting juice becomes the same: it is 9% (18:2)
The juice obtained in the first diffuser is transferred to the second, loaded with fresh chips. Upon reaching diffusion equilibrium, the sugar in the chips and juice in the second diffuser is distributed equally, and the sugar content of the juice is 13.5% ((18+9)/2).
From the second diffuser, the juice is transferred to the third, also filled with fresh chips. The sugar content of the juice in it reaches 15.75% ((18 + 13.5) / 2), etc. In the latter diffuser, the sugar content of the juice differs little from the sugar content of fresh beet chips.
Since there is still 9% of sugar in the chips in the first diffuser (only 9 of the 18% contained in fresh chips) goes into the juice, it is again filled with clean water to extract the sugar.
By establishing diffusion equilibrium in the first diffuser, juice is again obtained, although already with a lower sugar content: (9:2 = 4.5%). This juice is then transferred to the second diffuser, where the sugar content of the chips is 13.5%. Diffusion juice here is obtained with a sugar content of 9% ((13,5+ 4.5)/2). Translating this juice into the third diffuser, where the sugar content of the chips is 15.75%, juice is obtained with a sugar content of 12.37%, etc.
Thus, when the work of the diffusion battery is established, the most concentrated juice is supplied to the fresh, beet chips, and to the more or less sugar-free chips they serve either low concentration juice or pure water.
In this way, it is possible to extract sugar from beet chips as much as possible and to obtain a high concentration of diffusion juice. The loss of sugar in the pulp at the same time is only 0.2-0.25%.
The movement of juice from one diffuser to another is due to the small pressure created when pumping water into the first diffuser.
Recently, continuous-diffusion apparatuses have been used in sugar plants, replacing diffusion batteries that are loaded and unloaded periodically.
On the one hand, beet chips, which are moving in the opposite direction to the water coming from the opposite side, are continuously fed into the operating diffusion apparatus. Continuously washing water chips leaches sugar from it and gradually turns into a sugar-rich diffusion juice, which is removed from the diffusion apparatus. Similarly, de-sugared chips - beet pulp are continuously removed from the apparatus.
Purification of Diffusion Juice
In addition to sugar, the diffusion juice contains (about 2%) and other substances called non-sugars (salts of phosphoric and other acids, proteins), as well as small suspended particles that give the juice a dark color.
Purification of diffusion juice from suspended particles and a significant part of non-sugars is carried out with the help of lime, and carbonic acid is used for the subsequent removal of lime from the juice. Lime and carbon dioxide are produced in sugar plants by burning limestone (CaCO3 = CaO + CO2); its consumption is 5-6% by weight of processed beets.
Processing of diffusion juice with lime (in the form of milk of lime) is carried out in cylindrical boilers with agitators - defecators. Under the action of lime, non-sugar coagulates and precipitates or decomposes, forming calcium salts remaining in solution.
The lime treated (defaced) juice enters the saturator where it is treated with carbon dioxide. Under the action of carbon dioxide, lime is converted into calcium carbonate, CaCO3, which, precipitating, carries along non-sugar as well.
Carbon dioxide (saturated) juice is filtered on mechanical filters. At the same time, filter press mud containing calcium carbonate, sugar and insignificant amount of sugar (up to 1% by weight of mud) is separated from the juice.
Purified diffusion juice retains a dark color that is eliminated during the subsequent processing of the juice with sulfur dioxide (it is produced by burning sulfur). The process of treating the juice with sulfur dioxide is called sulphidation.
Evaporation of juice, boiling syrup and getting sugar
Purified juice enters the evaporator, where most of the water is removed from it. Juice acquires syrup concentration (65% of dry substances, including 60% of sugar and 5% of non-sugars remaining in the diffusion juice after its purification).
the syrup is again bleached with sulfur dioxide and filtered, then boiled in vacuum machines. The boiling of the syrup lasts 2.5 - 3 hours at a temperature of about 75 ° C (under vacuum). In the process of boiling sugar occurs crystallization. This produces a product containing 55 to 60% of sugar crystals and is called the first crystallization massecuite. The concentration of solids in the massecuite reaches 92.5% (of which about 85% is sugar).
From the vacuum apparatus, the massecuite is lowered into the mixer, and then sent to centrifuges, where the mother liquor is separated from the sugar crystals. The separated mother liquor is called green syrup. It also contains a significant amount of sugar, as well as non-sugar.
After removing the green molasses, the sugar remaining in the centrifuge is washed with water and steamed. As a result, the sugar becomes white. When rinsing sugar crystals in a centrifuge, a liquid containing dissolved sugar - white syrup is formed. It is returned to the vacuum apparatus for additional boiling on the first crystallization massecuite, which gives white sugar.
Sugar from centrifuges is sent to a tumble dryer. Dried sugar is already quite finished product - sugar, containing up to 99.75% pure sugar, counting on dry matter.
Green molasses is also sent to vacuum apparatus for respecting the second crystallization massecuite. At the same time receive the brown sugar going mainly to the confectionery industry. Special processing of brown sugar can be turned into an ordinary, white.
After separation of the second crystallization of the yellow sugar from the massecuite, fodder syrup, or molasses, which is a waste product, is obtained. The yield of molasses is about 5% by weight of the processed beet.
Taking into account the loss of sugar in the production process (most of it is lost in molasses - 9–14% of sugar contained in beets), its output from beets is almost 12–13%. At the same time, beet consumption per 1 ton of sugar exceeds 7–8 tons.
In the sugar making process, a lot of steam and hot water is consumed, usually produced in a plant boiler plant. The total fuel consumption at sugar beet plants (including the cost of roasting limestone) is 11–12% of the weight of the processed beets.
Beet sugar production is characterized by high water consumption for technological processes. It is 20 times the weight of processed beets. Taking into account the use of recycled water, fresh water consumption is also very significant and reaches 8 tons per 1 ton of beets.
The use of waste.
The most valuable waste of sugar beet production is fodder syrup, almost half of which consists of sugar and also contains other nutrients. As a result, the molasses is used as a concentrated feed for livestock (direct feeding or in the composition of feed). In addition, the stern molasses is processed into alcohol, yeast, citric and lactic acid and other products.
By special processing from the molasses feed, it is possible to extract the sugar contained in it and thereby increase its overall yield from the beets and reduce its cost. For this purpose, in some sugar plants, workshops have been built, in which the desiccation of molasses is produced.
Another waste is the pulp - sugarless beet chips. Pulp discharged from the diffusers with the help of water is transported to storage facilities (pulp pits). The pulp is nutritious, and animals willingly eat it, it is used in animal husbandry for fattening livestock. Some sugar plants have their own stockpiling facilities.
Fresh pulp contains up to 94% water. To increase the transportability and feed value of the pulp it is partially dehydrated and thus increases the content of dry matter in it to 15 - 18%. For long-term storage, the pulp is dried to a moisture content of 10–12%, using flue gases for drying.
Seasonality of the work of sugar beet plants.
Sugar beet plants differ sharply by pronounced seasonality of work. Sugar beets ripen, as a rule, in the second decade of September. At this time, they begin digging and transporting it to plants and processing. At the plants a stock of beets, stacked in piles, created which are processed at the end of its digging and removal. With long-term storage of beets, its sugar content is significantly reduced. Therefore, the plants tend to process the annual supply of raw materials in a minimum period of 3-4 months. Lengthening the shelf life of beets reduces the yield of sugar from a unit of raw materials and reduces the profitability of the sugar beet plant.