Band 9: The diagram below shows the manufacturing process for making sugar from sugar cane. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The diagram illustrates how sugar is manufactured from sugarcane. Overall, there are four main stages: farming, crushing, separating, and drying.

The first stage of the process starts with the growing of sugarcane for 12 to 18 months. After the sugarcanes ripen, they are harvested either manually or mechanically. For manual harvest, the sugarcane leaves need to be removed before they are chopped off. Whereas, for the mechanized method, the machine directly harvests the sugarcanes.

Moving on to the next stage, the harvested sugarcanes are crushed with a mill, which produces juice that is then purified using a limestone filter. Next, the filtered juice is heated in an evaporator, which causes the water to evaporate and the juice to transform into syrup. The syrup is then passed into a centrifuge and spun at a very high speed until the crystals are separated from the syrup. These crystals are then dried and cooled, giving the end result: sugar.