Sugar mill tubes and off-season materials for sugar factories and distilleries

Juice heaters and evaporator bodies need tubes that move heat quickly from steam or vapour into juice, and that can be rolled tightly into tube plates. Brass does both. It conducts heat several times better than stainless steel, expands well during rolling, and holds up to raw juice and the cleaning cycles between boilings. Most mills order sugar mill quality brass pipes in 70/30, the copper-rich brass that resists dezincification better than leaner brasses.

Tubes are specified by outside diameter, gauge (SWG) and length. Copy the size from the old tube or the heater drawing; do not guess, because tube plate holes leave no room for error.

Brass tubes also scale. Hard calcium and silica scale on the juice side cuts heat transfer quickly, and aggressive descaling with acid or caustic thins the wall over the years. Mills that track tube wall thickness during each off-season can plan partial retubing instead of reacting to leaks mid-season.

Many mills have moved some evaporator bodies and juice heaters to stainless tube. Stainless costs less per tube, is lighter and resists erosion and acidic cleaning better. The trade-off is lower heat transfer, which designers offset with more tube area. Juice lines, pans, crystallisers and molasses tanks increasingly use 304 sheet and pipe as well.

Mill rollers turn slowly under very heavy load, in a wet, juicy and dirty environment. Their bearings, known in the trade as 'brasses', are traditionally cast in gun metal or phosphor bronze, which run against steel journals without seizing and tolerate juice and water contamination. We supply both, along with brass rods and bars for smaller bushings and fittings.

Bearing wear shows up as rising temperature and grooved journals. Order the casting blanks early enough for your workshop to bore them before the trial run; a mill brass that arrives the week crushing starts usually goes in unfinished or not at all.