Energy consumption sugar production

As shown in Table III, the BDSA process offers significant advantages in two primary areas. First, the process has a significantly lower estimated production cost for BDO, succinic acid, and several other commodity chemicals, as well as lower energy consumption during production. Current com production could easily supply the 100 to 200 hundred million pounds of com sugar required for each major chemical plant, and use of this feedstock would decrease petroleum consumption and imports. Further analysis by ACC and New Horizon of the production cost for succinic acid in our fermentation process has included several process modifications to further decrease costs. The estimated costs in 1998 were 0.20/lb sodium succinate. However, the petrochemical routes to BDO have also had further improvements, increased capacity and presumably lowered the target price. 

FIG. 2 Actual consumption pyramid (based on 1996 CSFII data). The percentage of total energy consumption from discretionary fats, added sugars, and related food products is now 41% in contrast to the goal of not to exceed 27% (Anonymous, 2000). 

The environmental benefits are (1) reduced use of strong acids and bases, (2) reduced energy consumption (less greenhouse gas), (3) less corrosive waste, and (4) safer production environment for workers. The consumer benefits are (1) sweetener availability and stable prices (i.e., due to the ability to source from starch as an alternative to sugar cane and sugar beets), (2) consistent, and (3) higher quality syrups. 

The different lubricant suppliers made a technical proposal of their services (technical approach, monitoring, quality of the products, take back lubricants exhaust from the sugar mill, reports on lubricant consumption, environmental benefits like water consumption reduction, energy savings, increase of equipment life-cycles, statistics and controlling) as well as a time schedule for the work plan. Each of the suppliers accepted agreements concluded in a collaboration contract between the Mexican Cleaner Production Centre, the sugar mill and the lubricants supplier. 

The difference between honey and ordinary sugar is that honey is absorbed by the blood without digestion while ordinary sugar is absorbed by the blood after digestion. Honey is a healthy product which provides energy very soon after consumption. 

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