During our second stopover at Mission Beach with Andrew's parents, Andrew and Ian went on a tour of the sugar mill in Tully. We've been passing through hundreds of kilometres of cane fields for several weeks, including seeing cane being harvested and transported to mills on little cane trains. The tour gave quite a detailed look at the whole process and was very interesting and informative.
Basically the whole train carriage is tipped upside down and the cane dumped on a conveyor belt where it passes through a strong electro-magnet to remove any metal before it is crushed and pressed to remove the juice. The crushed cane is sprayed with hot water and pressed several more times to make sure all the juice has been removed. The left over fiberous matterial, begasse, is dried and used as a fuel for the boilers that power the mill.
The juice is then spun in a centrifuge to separate out the raw sugar crystals, which are then dried in a huge tumble drier, before being placed in trucks and sent to the port, ready for export to China. The mills runs 24/7 between June and December/January, unloading a carriage of cane every 40 seconds. Last year they processed over 3,000,000 tonnes of cane at this mill alone!
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