Kanpur (UP), Feb 22 (IANS): The National Sugar Institute claims to have made a major breakthrough in the processing technique of sugarcane juice clarification.

The technology has been successfully tried in the Experimental Sugar Factor of the institute in collaboration with The Sugar Technologists Association of India and M/s Chemical System Technologies, New Delhi.

Director, National Sugar Institute, Narendra Mohan, said: "In the conventional technology, the precipitated impurities from the sugarcane juice are removed by allowing them to settle in continuous settlers which takes about two hours, resulting in colour development, loss of heat and sugar losses. In the developed technology, the impurities are removed through flotation which requires only about 30-45 minutes thus overcoming the drawbacks of the conventional process. We have used a specially designed reactor, aerator and floatation clarifier for the purpose."

He said that the initial trials indicate colour removal during clarification to be much higher yielding sugar of better quality. Sugar should be taken out of the process by the shortest route as any increase in processing time is bound to increase sugar losses.