Sugarcane to Sugar.

d.

I mentioned in my last post how well the sugar mills have been performing this year , so I took the opportunity to have a guided tour through with my brother and one of our friends. It is an impressive operation when in full swing from the automation to the shear amount of volume that it pumps through in one day. This mill is "Invicta" and is 100k's from our farm, it has a through put capability (through the roller mill) of 1050 tonne per hour of sugarcane, and is the largest mill in the Burdekin and in the country I think? In a nut shell this plant squeezes the juice out of the cane, clarifies the juice, then processes juice to syrup, then seed sugar is added to grow crystal sugar from the syrup, then the sugar is put through centrifuges to spin out excess liquid (Molasses)sugar is then dried and sent to port for storage and export.The best part is that it is all powered by the fibre left from squeezing the juice out of the cane,this is called bagasse this is fed into furnaces that heat water to create steam to power turbines that generate electricity to power the whole operation, not only is the process self sufficient there is enough steam to power a 38 mega watt generator that feeds back into the electricity grid.