Day 10

The next morning we went to RENUKA  which is a sugar cane processing plant that produces raw sugar, ethanol, and power from steam. We had to wear hard hats and ear plugs while walking around the industrial site. We got to see trucks delivering the sugar cane plant, the washing of the crop, the grinders separating the juice from the pulp, boilers and evaporators that condense the molasses, yeast mixers for fermentation, centrifuges that separate the sugar crystals, and dryer that take out the moisture. We got to taste the raw sugar coming right out of the conveyor belt! This raw, unrefined sugar is then sent to refineries in India for refining then sold to companies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Cadbury. The power created is from burning the waste dried sugar came pulp called  bagasse. This heats up water which produces highly pressured steam that generates energy from turbines. 18 MW are generated but the plant only uses 7 MW so they are looking into ways of selling the excess energy. We also got to see the operations rooms and the chemical laboratories where they test everything from the outgoing sugar to the waste water generated. We ate lunch in the company dining hall with the fellow workers then started our 7 hour bus journey to our hotel at Foz do Iguaçu.