Sugar Dissolving System

The syrup room is a space where there are processing machines that are used for dissolving sugar, sweeteners or sugar alternatives into syrup products with water. Sometimes, it can also refer to the juice blending system.

Sugar is one of the main ingredients of fruit juice beverages or carbonated beverages. No matter it is the production of blended fruit juice, carbonated drinks, tea drinks, energy drinks, milk drinks, or tomato sauce and other seasoning foods, syrup is an essential ingredient. The process of sugar dissolving system in water to make single syrup is called sugar dissolving operation. The sugar solution obtained by dissolving sugar in water is generally called raw syrup or simple syrup. Sweeteners, sour agents, fruit juices, flavors, flavors, colors, preservatives, etc. are added to the raw syrup and mixed thoroughly to obtain a thick syrup, then it becomes a blended syrup.

The syrup room system usually includes sugar powder conveying, sugar powder dissolving, syrup pasteurization, syrup filtration and cooling, syrup storage and other units. Under special circumstances, the syrup needs to be degassed.

To prepare the original syrup in the syrup room, high-quality granulated sugar must be used as the raw material. The granulated sugar is dissolved in a certain amount of water to make a sugar solution of the expected concentration, which is filtered and clarified before use. Raw syrup preparation is divided into cold dissolving and hot dissolving methods. At present, most industrial production uses hot dissolving method to dissolve sugar. Hot dissolving is to heat a certain amount of sugar and water together and stir constantly to completely dissolve the sugar. The hot melt method can kill bacteria in the sugar solution, the sugar dissolves quickly, and a large amount of sugar solution can be produced in a short period of time. The higher the temperature, the greater the solubility of the syrup. In actual production, the sugar dissolution temperature is controlled at 80-85℃, and the concentration of the sugar solution after dissolution is 55-60brix.

Sugar is usually packed into 25kg/50kg sacks or ton bags. So different packs and different processing capacity, there are also different methods to feed sugar into the sugar-dissolving machines.

The first method is feeding the sugar into the sugar-dissolving tank manually. Usually, there is a big manhole in the sugar dissolving tank/pot, the operator first carries the sugar package to the sugar dissolving system platform by forklift and feeds it into the manhole in the dissolving tank. This method is suitable for producing small-capacity syrup below 2-3 tons per hour and with small sugar packs between 25-50kg per pack.

The second method is using a sugar-receiving hopper and a screw elevator to feed the sugar into the sugar-dissolving tanks. The sugar receiving hopper will be installed on the floor, and the elevator connect the hopper on the floor and sugar dissolving tank on the platform. The operator just only needs to feed sugar into the receiving hopper, and then elevate sugar to the tank manhole by vacuum feeding machine. This method is suitable for processing 2-5 tons per hour with raw sugar.

The third method is for ton bags IBC containers and big-capacity syrup production. The lifting crane is used to lift the IBC container bags and feed them into a high-speed sugar dissolver.

There are three machines that are mainly used for dissolving sugar, the first is sugar dissolving pot, it is suitable for dissolving small batch sugar and can be used for small beverage processing plants; The second is bottom type high shear emulsification tank, which is equipped with a high-speed stirrer, it is suitable for small to medium-scale beverage plant. The third is high-speed mixer, which is suitable for big scale syrup production.

The sugar-dissolving pot is a jacketed pot, it can be heated by steam in the jacket. After feeding into water and sugar, start the stir, then after about one hour, the sugar can be dissolved into syrup.

The bottom type high-shear emulsification tank will equip the high-shear emulsifying head, the sugar will be fed into the tank through a manhole or hopper and elevated to the high-shear mixing tank, after feeding into hot water, then start the high-shear emulsifying head, under the high shear force, the sugar is dissolved into syrup products.

The high-speed mixer/dissolver usually connects with one circulation tank, sugar is feeding into the hopper of the high-speed mixer, and at the same time the pure water is fed into the bottom of the dissolving device, under the action of the stator and rotor force, the sugar is dissolved into syrup, and the syrup will pump into circulation tank for storage. This device is suitable for producing syrup above 3 tons per hour.

After the syrup is dissolved and reaches the required Brix, then it can be pumped into the filter machine to remove the particles and solids in the syrup. There are two filter machines mainly used in syrup filtration:

The first is the double-filter machine, which is suitable for filtering the syrup and uses high-quality refined sugar as raw materials, the raw refined sugar is pure and particle is even no other color.

The second is the diatomaceous earth filter. When the raw sugar color is not pure, after dissolving sugar into syrup, there will need to be decolorization and decontamination treatment.

The syrup can be pasteurized by a sugar-dissolving tank or plate pasteurizer.

When the sugar is hot dissolved into the dissolving tank, when dissolving the syrup, it also has the function of pasteurization. When hot dissolving, the hot water(85-95℃) will be fed into the sugar dissolving tank and mixed with sugar, with this high temperature, the bacteria in syrup can be killed.

When clients want to produce high-quality syrup or cold dissolving method to dissolve sugar,  then the plate pasteurizer will be adopted. The syrup after filtration, it will be pumped into the plate pasteurizer, and the syrup will be heated to 85-90℃ and held for a few seconds, the pasteurization is finished.

The sugar dissolving pot used by the hot dissolving method uses a stainless steel jacketed pot. It is also equipped with a stirrer and a feed pipe at the bottom of the pot. The operation process is to first prepare the correct amount of sugar and water, pass the pure water into the jacketed pot, heat it to 85°C by steam, add in sugar, turn on the stirrer to fully dissolve the sugar and water, and then add the sweetener, Preservatives, sour agents, flavors and fragrances in sequence, After all the ingredients are fully mixed, stop stirring and keep for 5 minutes to achieve the purpose of sterilization. At this process, we get the blended syrup, but because there are still some solids or crystallized solid sugar liquid in the sugar dissolution process, we need to transport the syrup to the double filter/diatomaceous earth filter through the syrup pump to filter the solid particles or remove the color in syrup. After filtering, the syrup can be pasteurized or directly pumped into syrup storage tanks, then it can be pumped into the blending tank and fully mixed with the beverage, homogenized, sterilized and filled into small packages for consumption.