DEVELOPING LABORATORY NEAR INFRA-RED (NIR) INSTRUMENTS FOR THE ANALYSIS OF SUGAR FACTORY PRODUCTS

THIS PAPER describes recent BSES initiatives to develop laboratory NIR systems for sugar industry applications, in particular, for the analysis of sugar, molasses and other factory products. For the analysis of sugar, previous BSES work to develop online NIR calibrations was available for adaptation to a laboratory or at-line format and was supplemented by a targeted program of analytical work to improve the calibration range. Prototype systems were tested at two sugar mills late in the 2010 season on a range of sugar, molasses and other factory products and we present the preliminary results in this paper. These applications provide opportunities for sugar mills to benefit from the ability of laboratory NIR systems to provide cost and throughput advantages over traditional methods of analysis. In addition, the application of NIR systems is capable of broadening the range of analytical data that can be generated in environments which are not conducive to running traditional analytical methods.