Suraj

Growing and Harvesting the Cane

Sugar cane is a sub-tropical and tropical crop that prefers lots of sun and lots of water - provided that its roots are not waterlogged. It typically takes about 12 months to reach maturity although the time varies widely around the world from as short as six months in Louisiana to 24 months in some places. Where it differs from many crops is that it re-grows from the roots so the plant lasts many cycles [or 'ratoons', a word derived from the Spanish to sprout] before it is worn out. |

Sugar cane is harvested by chopping down the stems but leaving the roots so that it re-grows in time for the next crop. Harvest times tend to be during the dry season and the length of the harvest ranges from as little as 2 ½ months up to 11 months. The cane is taken to the factory: often by truck or rail wagon but sometimes on a cart pulled by a bullock or a donkey!

Cane preparation

| Cane preparation is critical to good sugar extraction, particularly with the diffusion extraction process. This is achieved with rotating knives and sometimes, hammer mills called "shredders". Shredding, however, requires extra energy and more equipment.MillingThe process of squeezing the sugar cane juice from sugar cane fibre,squeezing of juice normally goes through a series of 4 mills in tandem.ClarificationSucrose is squeezed from sugar cane stalks in a single pass through a fourth-roll crusher.the maximum amount that can be extracted is only 60% of the weight of the stalk.Evaporation

The factory can clean up the juice quite easily with slaked lime (a relative of chalk) which settles out a lot of the dirt so that it can be sent back to the fields. Once this is done, the juice is thickened up into a syrup by boiling off the water using steam in a process called evaporation. Sometimes the syrup is cleaned up again but more often it just goes on to the crystal-making step without any more cleaning. The evaporation is undertaken in order to improve the energy...