Fractal Behavior in the Clarification Process of Cane Sugar Production

Abstract

Cane sugar production is an important industrial process. One of the most important steps in cane sugar production is the clarification process, which provides high-quality, concentrated sugar syrup crystal for further processing. To gain fundamental understanding of the physical and chemical processes associated with the clarification process and help design better approaches to improve the clarification of the mixed juice, we explore the fractal behavior of the variables pertinent to the clarification process. We show that the major variables in this key process all show persistent long-range correlations, for time scales up to at least a few days. Persistent long-range correlations amount to unilateral deviations from a preset target. This means that when the process is in a desired mode such that the target variables, color of the produced sugar and its clarity degree, both satisfy preset conditions, they will remain so for a long period of time. However, adversity could happen, in the sense that when they do not satisfy the requirements, the adverse situation may last quite long. These findings have to be explicitly accounted for when designing active controlling strategies to improve the quality of the produced sugar.