Corrosion Problems in Sugar Factories in Mauritius

In Mauritius, corrosion costs forms a large part of the expenses of sugar cane mills and presently there has not been any study on this issue. The present study was therefore performed at one of the sugar cane mills in Mauritius so as to identify the different modes of corrosion degradation and the corrosivity of commonly used metals with respect to the corrosive fluids (mainly juices) encountered in the juice extraction process. The cost associated with the corrosion degradation was eventually calculated. Electrochemical tests were performed to measure and compare the corrosion rate for the metals in the corrosive fluids. It was observed that the highest and the lowest corrosion rates were recorded for pre-extractor mill juice and syrup respectively. Low carbon steel generally had the fastest corrosion rate while stainless steel 316L corroded the least. Finally, from gathered data, the cost of corrosion was found to be 6.6% of the turnover of the factory.