MadSci Network: Chemistry
Query:

Re: How do you separate brown sugar from white sugar after they have been mixed

Date: Thu Nov 13 09:00:38 2003
Posted By: Kevin Ramsey, Staff, Speciality Sweeteners, Chr. Hansen, Inc.
Area of science: Chemistry
ID: 1066504218.Ch
Message:

To talk about Brown Sugar one should learn exactly what it is and where it comes from.

The process of manufacturing sugar starts with the harvesting of the sugar cane from fields. This sugar cane is brought to a mill, washed with water, and then crushed using rollers. The juice that comes out of (extracted) from the sugar cane is approximately fifteen percent (15%) mainly sucrose (sugar) and eighty five percent (85%) water. This juice is then cleaned (through a clarified) to remove any impurities (dirt, fibers from the sugar cane) and water is removed (concentrated) to about eighty percent (80%) solids and twenty percent (20%) water.

The removal of the water causes the juice to form crystallizes until the juice is a syrup of all crystallizes. The syrup is then added to a centrifuge (which is a large spinning cylinder) that removes some of the molasses that surrounds the sugar crystal. This process is repeated over and over until a white crystal is formed similar to what you know as table sugar (white sugar).

Soft brown sugars are commercially manufactured by two processes; the older "boiling or co﷓crystallization" method, which can be considered a clean, controlled raw sugar production. In essence this product is produced from instead of continually adding the crystals (from the syrup) to the centrifuge the product is removed and is called brown sugar. The second process is the "painting" method, which consists of intimately mixing granulated sugar with an appropriate amount and type of molasses. The "painting" process allows the manufacturer to produce a brown sugar that has all the usual features (composition, flavor, color) and physical characteristics of that made by the older "boiling" procedure. Brown Sugar Molasses can be "painted" onto refined white granulated sugar by almost any mechanical dry mixing procedure employed in a food plant (i.e., screw conveyor, sigma mixer, ribbon blender).

So to answer your question you can remove the molasses portion from the soft brown sugar by centrifuging the crystallized syrup. Or by producing a white sugar and then not adding the liquid molasses to it (painting).


Current Queue | Current Queue for Chemistry | Chemistry archives

Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Chemistry.



MadSci Home | Information | Search | Random Knowledge Generator | MadSci Archives | Mad Library | MAD Labs | MAD FAQs | Ask a ? | Join Us! | Help Support MadSci


MadSci Network, webadmin@www.madsci.org
© 1995-2003. All rights reserved.