The other night I took my camera to work and took pictures. I work in a sugar factory, where sugar is extracted from sugar beets. I work on the floor where the juice is separated from the crystals, Centrifugals, or at we call it here, 3S.

Your host, hard at work:

After I climb the stairs to 3S, This is my first glimpse of work. Admittedly, it's pretty grim.
I see this scene an awful lot: The BMA white centrifugals! They were made in Germany.
The evaporated beet juice is seeded and boiled up in batches. Every half-hour or so I get sent a batch to deal with. One of the things I adjust in the white centrifugals is the "purge", or the number of seconds before the spray arm comes down. Here is BMA white #3 loading and purging:

The purge is RIGHT ON.

After a few minutes of spinning and much spraying of water, the machine plows the damp sugar out into a scroll underneath. Here is no. 1 plowing out. Some streaking is visible on the screen.
The scroll takes it to the cooler dryer, so named probably because it's cooler looking than the pulp dryers.

It looks like it should be in orbit doesn't it? Once in a while, it decides to be a pain in the dick and can't keep up with the centrifuges and starts plugging up. Then I think they should launch it into orbit and use it for missile practice.

Here are the continuous BMAs. Low raws to the left, high raws to the right. The one down the end in the center is a "swing machine" which can be used as a low or a high raw machine as necessary. It looks a lot scummier in the picture than it looks in real life. Or maybe I am just used to it.
Back by the "old" high raws really is kind of scummy. Or, more accurately, sugary. Sugar dissolved in water seeps into tiny cracks in the concrete, forcing it apart! Once in a while I come back here, take a hose, and and spray out the sugar that collects in their outer rings and adjust the water and steam spray arms. These machines are all controlled by hand. The rest I mostly control via a computer in a ridiculously tiny control room.


Well there you have it. That's where I work.
For now...

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