FORT MORGAN, Colo.—When there's a sweet but somewhat funky smell in the air coupled with white or gray plumes bursting into the sky above the Western Sugar Cooperative factory in Fort Morgan, it's a pretty safe bet that sugarbeets are being processed.
A great many Fort Morgan and Morgan County residents or their relatives have worked at the plant, but how many of them really know the process for turning the tubers to sugar and by-products?
Western Sugar Fort Morgan Factory Manager Don Gorsek and Agriculturist Stewart Norrish recently gave the Fort Morgan Times a crash course in sugar-making.
"It's a complicated process," Gorsek said.
Sugar
Once the beets have been dropped from the rehaul trucks into the wet hopper, they get drug up through machinery that lifts them and separates out the rocks and other trash. They then get washed and lifted up to the slicers.
From there, beets get cut into "cossettes," which are "noodle-like" slices.
Those slices then are moved in a rush of water along belts into the diffuser, which is full of hot water, and where the cossettes soak.
Doing that "diffuses the sugar out of cells in the beets," Gorsek explained.
The sugary juice thus gets separated from the pulp, but both of those resulting products have many more steps to take at the factory.
The pulp gets pressed and then ends up becoming cattle feed, he said. It typically is about 76 percent moisture, making it a desirable silage product.
"The juice that's pressed out of the wet pulp goes back to the diffuser and gets recycled," he said, adding that there are 15 steps used to purify the raw sugar beet juice.
It then goes through carbonation and milk of lime treatments to control pH. Both the milk of lime and carbon dioxide are created by burning limestone in a kiln.
Next comes a clarifier, where calcium carbonate, formed from the lime and carbon dioxide, settles. What's left is a "clear juice," which is sent to heaters and carbonation and filtration stages.
After that, the juice gets mixed with sulphur dioxide, which helps remove color and further control pH and turn it into "thin juice." That then gets sent to the evaporator supply tank, where it is heated until it becomes "thick juice."
The goal is to get it down to at least 55 percent concentration, Gorsek said.
Next, it goes through crystallization and separation of "high" and "low" raw sugars and then gets heated and concentrated further.
There are three stages of boiling, which produce white, intermediate and raw types of sugar, Gorsek said.
The third stage of crystallization is what produces white sugar. Granulated sugar is 99.9 percent sugar, Gorsek said.
"It's a fascinating process," he said of getting sugar from the beets.
Other products
Other parts of this process lead to the creation of beet molasses, "industrial granulates" (aka powdered sugar), pressed pulp for cattle feed and precipitated calcium carbonate for soil supplementation, Gorsek said.
The beet molasses produced in Fort Morgan gets trucked to the Scottsbluff Western Sugar plant, where it undergoes a desugarization process and further filtration and concentration.
The molasses still can be sold as a feed supplement, Gorsek said, but it is not fit for human consumption.
"It's not blackstrap," he said. "It's high in salt, so cattle like it. You can also use it as a feed source for yeast."
The pressed pulp comes from the process that separates out the juice, and it includes the "chips and tailings" from the beets. It also can include "whatever vegetation comes in" with the beets, Gorsek said.
The precipitated calcium carbonate is a by-product of the carbonation and milk of lime filtration process. It is something that can be good for soil, so it gets sold for that purpose, according to Gorsek.
Factory safety
One of the things someone taking a tour of Western Sugar's Fort Morgan factory may notice pretty quickly is the emphasis put on safety.
"Generally, there are 200 to 250 workers in the factory," Gorsek said. "We have a very strong commitment to making it a safe process for our people."
Workers were observed wearing protective gear, like earplugs, goggles and hardhats, stairways had railings, there was enough light to see, and there seemed to be sufficient signage in places where safety hazards could exist.
"There's so much focus on safety right now," he said. "There's a lot of investment going into safety."
That investment, of both money for safety gear and time for safety training, seems to be paying off.
"With continued commitment, if we can go to the middle of December, that would be four years without a lost-time accident," Gorsek said, a proud note in his voice. "I attribute that to the employees and their commitment to watching out for each other."
And Gorsek understands that avoiding accidents is not always possible, but a bit of vigilance and planning can help prevent it. That's been his goal in Fort Morgan, but it also is a major focus for Western Sugar overall, according to the cooperative's website.
Now entering the height of its latest sugar beet campaign, those white plumes and signature smells coming from the sugar factory are not likely to fade away anytime soon—at least until all of this year's "best in the last 10 years" beet crop has been processed.
But those are just signs that the beet sugar industry is alive and well in Fort Morgan.
Source: www.fortmorgantimes.com