The diagram illustrates the process by which sugar is manufactured from sugar beets. Overall, sugar production is a complicated process involving several stages, beginning with unloading beets from the trucks and ending with spinning sugar in a centrifuge to crystallize sugar.
At the beginning of the process, on arrival at the mill, the harvested sugar beets are unloaded from the trucks. They are dirty because they have come straight from the farm, so they are shaken so as to remove the dirt and rocks. Then, they are washed in a machine called a beet washer. After being washed, the beets are cut up into cossettes, which are small pieces of beets.
Once this stage is completed, the cossettes are placed in water heated to 70°C, allowing sugar juice to be extracted. As this juice may still be dirty, milk of lime is added to the liquid in order to remove any impurities. The purified sugar juice is subsequently passed through the filter so that the milk of lime could be removed, producing clean sugar juice. Afterwards, the sugar juice is heated several times to evaporate excess water and form a concentrated syrup. At the end of the process, the sugar is spinned in a centrifuge to create sugar crystals.