Applications for a new sucrose analyser: preliminary findings.

A Sucrose Analyser, developed by the Sugar Research Institute in Australia, was made available for evaluation in the South African sugar industry. The analyser was installed in line on evaporator syrup, at a raw sugar factory. After an original in situ calibration with sucrose solutions of known concentrations it performed satisfactorily and repeated calibrations showed no evidence of drift or bias. Tests were carried out for six weeks during which the sucrose values were logged by the factory data capturing system. The Sucrose Analyser was then set up for laboratory applications at the Sugar Milling Research Institute (SMRI). Both continuous and batch operations were evaluated using juices, syrups and molasses with the appropriate calibrations. Again the analyser performed well. The paper describes how the analyser was calibrated and comments on the results obtained.