"Rogers
Sugar operates one cane refinery in Vancouver, Canada and one beet
factory in Taber, Canada - each has a copy of Sugars. An associated
company, Lantic Sugar in Montreal, Canada also has a copy of the
program.
We
have used Sugars since 1989. Our principle use has been for material and
energy balances around evaporators and heaters. On first receiving the
program, we were quite happy to save the full cost of Sugars on one
evaporator calandria replacement. We used the program to calculate a
heating surface area that was smaller than the one that we were
replacing and the difference in cost was more than enough to pay for the
program. In 1997, we used the program for the heat and material portion
of a 50% expansion of our beet factory. The consulting engineering firm
for the expansion wanted to do this work and pass on substantial charges
for doing it, but we opted to use Sugars and our own personnel. The
expansion is now complete and the steam and material balances have
proven to be very accurate. The work involved the installation of a
complete new evaporator station and the addition of a number of new
heaters.
Prior
to getting the program, I personally did many evaporator calculations
and wrote programs to assist in this work. However there is no
substitute for the ease of use and accurateness of the Sugars program at
such a reasonable cost."
Bryon
Karren
Director
of Technical Operation
Rogers
Sugar
Vancouver, Canada
"As
Holly Sugar Corporation, we have used the Sugars program since
its inception. Now as Imperial Sugar Company, we include Holly
Sugar Corporation, Imperial Sugar Refinery, Spreckels Sugar Company,
Dixie Crystals or Savannah Foods & Industries Inc., Michigan Sugar
Company, Diamond Crystal Specialty Foods, and Wholesome Foods. We have
multiple Licenses of the Sugars Program and some plants have modeled the
whole process while in the engineering department we use it to model
process changes that we will make under our capital improvement
projects. With the new Windows Version of Sugars using Visio, the
program is much easier to set up and use and this will increase the
usage of the program at the plant level."
James
H. Roeder P.E.
Chief
Engineer
Imperial
Sugar Company
Sugar
Land, Texas USA
"Spreckels
Sugar Company has utilized the Sugars modeling program very
successfully to evaluate process improvements and the integration of new
processes into existing factory operations. Specific examples of these
uses are the reconfiguration of sugar end operations and integration of
the molasses desugarization process at the Mendota, California factory.
During
the design phase, the Sugars model provided the means to evaluate a
number of possible configurations as well as potential bottlenecks and
deficiencies. After start-up, the model provided for the quick
evaluation of actual operations and helped identify solutions to achieve
operating targets.
Overall,
the Sugars model has proven to give an accurate prediction of the
process operation for both material and energy balances. For the Mendota
project, the results actually being achieved by the factory are within a
few percentage points of the predicted material and energy balances and
well within the normal process variation to be expected."
Chris
Rhoten, V.P. (now with Minn-Dak Farmers Coop.)
Spreckels
Sugar Co. (now owned by Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Coop.)
Pleasanton,
California USA
"CSM
SUIKER is using Sugars for energy studies and optimization studies
of the vacuum pan house, in combination with other models and programs
developed by our process engineers. In our opinion and experience with
Sugars, the simulation of the process starting with thin juice is
accurate and reliable. The strength of Sugars is that starting from an
accurate model of the present situation, the effect of changes in the
process can be simulated rapidly. The new Windows version means a great
improvement in terms of user-friendliness. For the future, we hope
to be able to expand the use of the program to extraction and
purification."
A.J.
Waterlander
Head
Technology Department
CSM
Suiker bv
Centraal
Laboratorium
Breda,
The Netherlands
"The
Sugars program has revolutionized Process Engineering at American
Crystal Sugar Company. We use the program exclusively to evaluate
the process impact of new technologies, establish project savings
estimates, and develop master material balances for further engineering
design work. We have so much confidence in the Sugars model that process
enhancement projects do not go forward without first being tested on the
Sugars program."
Neil
Juhnke, Production Superintendent
American
Crystal Sugar Company
Moorhead,
Minnesota USA
"In
our opinion, Sugars is one of the most useful tools for simulation,
calculation and teaching, that we have ever used, in the works for
improvement of our facilities."
Ebro
Agricolas (now Azucarera Ebro Agricolas S.A.)
Madrid,
Spain
"Sugars
was the main tool that we used in developing the heat and material
balance for the grass roots beet factory we are building in Moses Lake,
Washington USA. After the model of the factory was developed, Sugars was
used extensively during the design phase of the project to quickly weigh
one design option against another. No changes in design were done before
first analyzing them with Sugars. The data from the Sugars balance was
used to size all of the pumps, piping and new process equipment that we
are installing at Moses Lake."
Troy
Wright, Process Engineer
Imperial
Holly Corporation
Sugar
Land, Texas USA
"We
used Sugars to model the syrup mixing and flash crystallization stages
in our continuous vacuum crystallizers (CVC's). The modeling showed us
which parameters had the biggest influence on crystal yield and which
were likely to cause problems with false grain.
As
a result of the modeling work, we changed the operating conditions of
the CVC's and achieved an increase in crystal yield without an increase
in false grain formation, or any other significant effect on sugar
quality."
Steve
Williams, Production Manager
British
Sugar plc
Wissington,
England
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