IDENTIFICATION OF COMPONENT FOR MINIMISATION TO ACHIEVE LOW MOLASSES VISCOSITY

Molasses displays a viscosity that is sensitive to temperature. With low-grade molasses, it may become too viscous for processing at ambient temperature. The ability to control molasses viscosity and rheology will bring significant productivity improvement to sugar processing. Such control may be achieved via certain component minimisation. This paper aims to identify the components that should be minimised via a rheological study of model sugar solutions. The major components of molasses are sucrose, reducing sugars, polysaccharides, potassium salts and small organic ionic molecules. Model sugar solutions containing some and all of these major components were prepared. The rheology of these solutions was characterised as a function of temperature. It was found that the temperature sensitivity of the viscosity is a function of solute concentration only and not of a specific component. It was also found that the viscosity of these solutions was increased significantly by dissolved dextran and the extent of increase was much greater when higher molecular weight dextran was used. This strongly suggests that the prevention of dextran or polysaccharide formation is the most effective mean of keeping the molasses viscosity low.