Technical accounting: sugar extraction and losses

The bought sugar in the processed raw material (either beet or cane) comprises a high financial value and may contribute to somewhere around 50% of the white sugar production costs. It is therefore of the utmost importance to minimize sugar losses along the process and produce as much white sugar as possible from the raw material. This paper explains the principle of technical accounting as tool to control sugar extraction and losses in beet sugar manufacture. The sugar mass balance used to calculate the overall sugar extraction yield, as well as several simple calculations proposed for estimating the different sugar losses (like e.g. extraction (diffusion) losses, infection losses, sugar losses in molasses, etc.) in the subsequent process steps will be explained in detail. Proper technical accounting is considered indispensable for continuous process control and process improvement in pursuit of best-practice operation and cost-leadership.