(674e) Sugar Cane Refinery -Production of Sugarcane Wax From Sulphitation Press Mud

A.K.Ray , R.B.Nigam*  S.K.Sharma*and P.Sanyal

Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Saharanpur Campus, Saharanpur , India

*Former Director, National Sugar Institute, Kanpur, Govt. of India

** Former Advisor (By-products),National federation of Cooperation Sugar Factories Ltd.

ABSTRACT

India is the largest cane sugar producing country  in the World. Apart from sugar it  discharges a large 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 there are  allround attempts all over the cane sugar producing countries to establish a biorefinery to make this industry profitable. One of the waste products is filter mud which contains   3.4 %  ( at 77% moisture) on the basis of 100  tonne can crushed. The quantity of filter mud varies from country to country, from mill to mill and even within the same mill and from 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 of biological fertilizer,helps in the disposal of distillery spent wash after recovering useful fuel in the form of Methane gas, the press mud of sulphitation sugar factories contains a very valuable chemicals ,wax. A number of modified waxes e.g. mountain wax , can also be derived from it.  Till today most of the sugarcane industries  leave this waste to the field which makes the soil impervious to water penetration if repeated use is made. No attempt has been made to recover wax from the press mud in industrial scale.With everincreasing 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 sugar refinery  , it can be a finest chemical   the sugar refinery can produce  comparable to the commercialized  wax from petroleum refinery  on one hand and solving solid waste disposal problem in the sugar industry on the other and considerable foreign exchange can be saved from this exploitation.

In this present investigation ,an attempt has been made to review the potential of various bye products to produce value added chemicals  in a  sugar refinery with special emphasis on recovery, refining and modification of sugarcane wax . Details of extraction process  in laboratory experiments  as well as in pilot plant are reviewed.Further investigation is made on economic feasibility  studies in order to establish a  full sized plant based on data of a pilot plant study.