Sugar is important; all organisms need sugar as a source of energy. Its chemical structure is simple, encompassing all saccharides from monosaccharides, disaccharides, oligo- and polysaccharides. However, in everyday terms we think of sugar as a sweet crystalline substance obtained from various plants. It is in fact sucrose, a disaccharide consisting of fructose and glucose.
Sugar testing
Regardless of whether sugar is produced from sugar cane or sugar beet, it must meet the standards defined by the industry and health organizations. By far the most important, ICUMSA™ (International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis), is used as a reference across the industry. Hence, sugar testing is an important procedure that must be performed throughout the production process.
The quality of sugars is determined by a series of chemical and physical properties. This application brochure presents selected analytical methods for the state-of-the-art measurements of several sugar quality parameters using instruments by METTLER TOLEDO.
This includes:
- Color determination
- Brix values
- Moisture determination
- pH measurements
- Weighing solutions
- Karl Fischer water determination
- Titrimetric alkalinity and hardness analysis