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Project overview
A leading sugar refinery in Thailand partnered with Thermax to upgrade its sugar decolourisation process.
The objective was to improve operational efficiency, enhance decolourisation performance, and achieve consistently lower colour levels in treated sugar melt under continuous plant operations.
Challenges
- The refinery was operating a continuous lead-lag system using an acrylic strong base anion resin in the primary column and a styrenic strong base anion resin in the secondary column to treat 60°C brix sugar melt. With incoming colour levels exceeding 600 ICUMSA, the existing setup was unable to deliver the desired level of decolourisation efficiently.
Solution
- Thermax recommended replacing the existing acrylic–styrenic resin combination with a styrenic–styrenic macroporous strong base anion resin configuration to improve decolourisation performance.
Result
- The upgraded resin system delivered significant cost savings and increased treated syrup volumes, while consistently achieving a treated colour level of below 150 ICUMSA.
