Removal of phenolic, turbidity and color in sugarcane juice by electrocoagulation as a sulfur-free process.

This work analyzed the use of electrocoagulation as substitute for sugarcane clarification process using sulfitation. It was evaluated technological parameters (Icumsa color and turbidity), phenolic compounds content and CIELAB color parameters. Four kinetics of reduction color from sugarcane juice were carried out. The essays were divided according to the voltage applied: 35, 45, 55 and 65 V (also based on previous tests). Higher voltage treatments achieved greater reduction of Icumsa color, turbidity and total phenolic compounds. However, none of treatments impacted simple phenolic content analyzed in this work. Tristimulus analysis presented some pattern that went beyond technological analysis, including that 65 V essay changed the pigmentation of sugarcane juice and had an early stabilization on chroma. This kind of results could be useful for industry, once they could correlate quality with different color parameters and finally improve the clarification in general with finer settings of technique according to different situations.