Three mechanisms thus take place in sugar drying: 1) Evaporation of moisture at a rate governed by the vapor pressure difference between the film and the surrounding air. 2) Diffusion of water molecules through the surface film, driven by the concentration gradient.

Discover the importance of sugar drying for producing free-flowing, high-quality sugar ready for storage and distribution.

This paper identifies the issues with the design of sugar drying systems in respect of sugar crystal size and regularity and to explain a theory of sugar drying. It sets out to define how drying occurs and what affects the drying process.

Sugar drying removes excess moisture from the sugar using heat, while cooling the sugar brings it to an ideal temperature for storage and transport. Without processing sugar in this way, clumping and discoloration during storage would occur, degrading the quality and value of the final product.

•Conditioning is slow drying of recently dried sugar to further remove surface and bound water to produce a dry, stable, free flowing product that does not cake during transport or storage. •Several excellent technical papers over the years explain the processes involved and operational requirements. •See references for further reading

Sugar drying and cooling is the final step to stabilize sugar before its storage and/or packing. Fives’ dryer-coolers reduce sugar moisture and temperature, while ensuring a high output of commercial sugar.

Drying and cooling of sugar is one of the special applications where Ingetecsa has a sound reputation. Our first sugar dryer reference goes back to early last century. It started when we supplied the first beet pulp rotary drum dryers.

Sugar drying in a drying drum offers the added benefit that because of the sturdy design fluctuations in throughput and fairly large sugar lumps, but also temporary high sugar moisture contents are tolerated without causing any major problems.

The process of drying and cooling the centrifuged sugar has a decisive role to play here, and this phase in the production process is increasingly developing into a conditioning phase before the sugar is stored, graded and packed.

Fluidization makes almost the entire surface of the sugar crystals available for contact with the circulating drying and cooling air. The resulting conditions of intensive heat and mass transfer render surface moisture removal highly effective.