"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
"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 Monitor Sugar Co.)
Spreckels
Sugar Co. (now Imperial-Holly Corp.)
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
