Stock Photo - Cane sugar. It is thought that cane sugar was first used by man in Polynesia from where it spread to India. In 510 BC the Emperor Darius of what was then Persia invaded India where he found ´the reed which gives honey without bees´. The secret of cane sugar, as with many other of man´s discoveries, was kept a closely guarded secret whilst the finished product was exported for a rich profit. Production of cane sugar_ steps 1. Harvesting_ Harvesting is done either by hand or by machine. 2. Extraction_ The first stage of processing is the extraction of the cane juice. In many factories the cane is crushed in a series of large roller mills. A typical mixed juice from extraction will contain perhaps 15% sugar and the residual fibre, called bagasse, will contain 1 to 2% sugar, about 50% moisture and some of the sand and grit from the field as ´ash´. A typical cane might contain 12 to 14% fibre which, at 50% moisture content gives about 25 to 30 tons of bagasse per 100 tons of cane or 10 tons of sugar. 3. Liming_ The factory can clean up the juice quite easily with slaked lime (a kind of chalk) which settles out a lot of the dirt so that it can be sent back to the fields. This process is known as liming. 4. Evaporation_ After the liming, the juice is thickened up into a syrup by boiling off the water using steam in a process called evaporation. 5. Boiling/ crystallization_ The syrup is placed into a very large pan for boiling, the last stage. In the pan even more water is boiled off until conditions are right for sugar crystals to grow. Crystal formation is initiated by throwing some crystals into the syrup. Once the crystals have grown the resulting mixture of crystals and mother liquor is spun in centrifuges to separate the two, rather like washing is spin dried. The crystals are then given a final dry with hot air before being stored.