Sugar. Cane

The term sugar describes the chemical class of carbohydrates (qv) of the general formula C (H20) or for monosaccharides. Colloquially, sugar 

The sucrose in cane sugar is identical to that in beet sugar both white refined products are 99.9% sucrose, with water as the principal nonsucrose component. Trace components from the plant indicate the origin of the sugar. 

Until a few hundred years ago, sugar was strictiy a luxury item. Queen Elizabeth I is credited with putting it on the table in the now familiar sugarbowl, but it was so expensive that it was used only on the tables of royalty. Sugar production reached large volume at a reasonable price only by the eighteenth century. 

The first use of steam power as a replacement for the animal or human power that drove the cane mills occurred in Jamaica in 1768. This first attempt worked only a short time, but steam drive was used successfully a few years later in Cuba. Steam drive for the mills soon spread throughout the world. The use of steam instead of direct firing was soon appHed to the evaporating of the cane juice. 

The manufacture of sugar was early understood to be an energy-intensive process. Cuba was essentially deforested to obtain the wood that fueled the evaporation of water from the cane juice. When the forests were gone, the bagasse burner was developed to use the dry cane pulp, called bagasse, for fuel. Bagasse was no longer a waste product its minimal value is the cost of its replacement as fuel. 

The principal analytical methods were developed in the mid-nineteenth century the polariscope by Ventzke in 1842, the Brix hydrometer in 1854, Fehling s method for reducing sugars, and Clerget s method for sucrose in 1846. 

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Certain aliphatic compounds are oxidised by concentrated nitric acid, the carbon atoms being split off in pairs, with the formation of oxalic acid. This disruptive oxidation is shown by many carbohydrates, e.g., cane sugar, where the chains of secondary alcohol groups, -CH(OH)-CH(OH)-CH(OH)CH(OH)-, present in the molecule break down particularly readily to give oxalic acid. 

Cane sugar.—Melts, darkens, then chars, and finally burns, with a marked odour of burnt sugar. Typical of the changes given by mono- and di-saccharides. 

Dissolve 10 g. of cane sugar in water and make up to approxi mately 100 ml. Label three boiling tubes A, B and C, and in them place the following ... 

Of the common disaccharides sucrose does not reduce Fehling s solution. If the cane Sugar is hydrolysed by boiling it with dilute acid and the solution is neutralised with aqueous sodium hydroxide, the reduction of Fehling s solution occurs readily. 

Saccharin Itself is sparingly soluble in cold water, but the imino hydrogen is acidic and the compound forms a water-soluble sodium salt. The latter is about 600 times as sweet as cane sugar. 

Sorbitol is a sweetener often substituted for cane sugar because it is better tolerated by dia betics It IS also an intermediate in the commercial synthesis of vitamin C Sorbitol is prepared by high pressure hydrogenation of glucose over a nickel catalyst What is the structure (including stereochemistry) of sorbitoP... 

Brix hydrometer is graduated so that the number of degrees is identical with the percentage by weight of cane sugar and is used at the temperature indicated on the hydrometer. 

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