Lime is used in sugar production when purifying the juice from beet or cane. Sugar beet is sliced up and passed through a diffusor to extract the sugar juice. Lime, produced from high calcium limestone, is used in the production process for this essential operation.
Problems
Good-quality milk of lime is required in the sugar process for the sugar juice purification. Lime is used to capture and remove impurities in the juice of sugar beets. 125kg of limestone are used for the production of one ton of sugar.
Most sugar-processing plants have their own lime kilns, so they need good-quality limestone to burn.
The high calcium limestone is converted into quicklime in these lime kilns, at a temperature of 900°C. Water is added to this lime to obtain the milk of lime.
Solutions
For many years now, Carmeuse has been selecting from its quarries the best-adapted high calcium limestone for delivery to large-scale and smaller sugar producers. Thanks to the company’s expertise, Carmeuse limestone is a worldwide reference for quarries that provide stone of this quality.
Carmeuse also assists customers in the starting and closing periods of a sugar campaign, by directly providing them with the quicklime or milk of lime that they may need.
For sugar refineries, Carmeuse supplies high calcium quicklime for the refining of raw sugar.
Milk of lime is also used to clean wastewater produced by sugar plants.
Being such a versatile product, lime is also used to purify raw materials. The by-products containing lime and organic residues are commonly re-used in agriculture, as a soil amendment rich in organic matter.