Hygroscopic water and compression

Hygroscopic water has been assumed not to be removed from cane or bagasse by mechanical compression. New measurements show that the hygroscopic water determined by contact of sucrose solution with dry fibre is much lower at higher compaction. (Compaction is a commonly-used term in milling defined as mass of (dry) fibre per unit volume of cane or bagasse.) The apparent hygroscopic water in prepared cane has been shown previously to fall with increasing compression (Murry, 1997) but the curve of hygroscopic water against compaction is different from the new data. The quantity of hygroscopic water in cane or bagasse is important in current attempts to model the mill extraction process.