Influence of exopolysaccharides on viscosity of sugar juices with low sucrose contents

The presence of dextran originating from frost-damaged or degraded beet is highly detrimental during beet sugar manufacture, because they cause difficulties in filtering the carbonatation juice. In this paper the impact of exopolysaccharides on the viscosity of low sucrose content juices including: raw juice, juice after the 1st filtration and thin juice were analyzed. Studies have shown that high molecular mass exopolysaccharides have a stronger effect on the juice viscosity than low molecular mass exopolysaccharides. However, the dynamic viscosity of technical sugar solutions (raw juice or thin juice) with exopolysaccharides at a content of up to 0.5g/kg, is lower than the viscosity of pure sugar solutions having the same refractometric dry substance content (RDS).