Sugar Cane refinery -production of sugarcane wax from sulphitation press mud

摘要

India is the largest cane sugar producing country in the World. Apart from sugar it discharges alarge number of byproducts such as bagasse, molasses, press mud , cane tops, leaves and straw.Economy of Indian sugar industry is not as expected due to variety of reasons. Therefore, thereare all round attempts all over the cane sugar producing countries to establish a biorefinery tomake this industry profitable. One of the waste products of sugar industry is filter mud which isapproximately 3.4 % ( at 77% moisture) on the basis of 100 tonne cane crushed. The quantityof filter mud varies from country to country, from mill to mill and even within the same mill andfrom field to field. The parameters influencing the variation include systems of clarification,extraction, cane variety, degree of mechanization etc. Filter mud is not only a source ofbiological fertilizer, but also helps in the disposal of distillery spent wash after recovering usefulfuel in the form of Methane gas. The press mud of sulphitation sugar factories contains a veryvaluable chemical ,wax which is a suitable substitute of carnauba wax. A number of modifiedwaxes e.g. mountain wax , can also be derived from it. Till today most of the sugarcaneindustries leave this waste to the field which makes the soil impervious to water penetration ifrepeated use is made. No attempt has been made to recover wax from the press mud in industrialscale.With ever increasing shortage of vegetable wax, e.g. Carnauba for its multiple uses,these fine chemicals are mostly imported.If the economy of recovering and refining wax from press mud is established in a sugarrefinery , it can be a finest chemical the sugar refinery can produce comparable to thecommercialized wax from petroleum refinery on one hand and solving solid waste disposalproblem in the sugar industry on the other and considerable foreign exchange can be saved fromthis exploitation.In this present investigation ,an attempt has been made to review the potential of various byeproducts to produce value added chemicals in a sugar refinery with special emphasis onrecovery, refining and modification of sugarcane wax . Details of extraction process inlaboratory experiments as well as in pilot plant are reviewed. Further investigation is made oneconomic feasibility studies in order to establish a full sized plant based on data of a pilot plantstudy.