Address: 3845 Highway 75
St. Gabriel, LA 70776
Phone: 225-642-0135
Fax: 225-642-8790

Website: LSUAgCenter.com/audubon

Office Hours:
8 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Monday-Friday

Academic Focus:

Offers undergraduate and graduate programs in sugar engineering in conjunction with other engineering degrees.

Research Focus:

Conducts research to improve sugar manufacturing towards a diversified sugar-processing industry.

Extension Focus:

Conducts training sessions with factory managers and their staff on knowledge for reducing sugar losses in processing. Facilitates boiler operation compliance and conducts molasses and other special sample analyses.

Academic/Research/Extension Highlights

Each year the Audubon Sugar Institute conducts a Factory Operations Seminar for representatives of the Louisiana sugar industry. Topics from these seminars not only offer projects to increase the efficiency in sugar processing but also include information on new technologies developed to add value to molasses, to directly produce white sugar at the mill and to produce value-added products from sugarcane biomass among others.

Short courses at Audubon Sugar Institute are designed to increase knowledge of personnel at all levels in the sugar industry and are offered to coincide with the off-crop season. The course curriculum can be customized to meet the needs of the clientele and range from a 1 to 2 week long class in sugar boiling for pan operators and mill personnel to a four-day training for bench chemists.

The Audubon Sugar Institute conducts laboratory and pilot-scale research on potential alternative fuels ranging from producing ethanol from sugars and biomass at raw-sugar mills and using starch-based products to produce butanol to investigating the technical feasibility of the supplemental production of ethanol from algae.

Significance of Programs

• Provide technological information and process support to the 11 sugar factories in Louisiana through annual factory operations seminars and mill visits during the grinding campaign and off-crop season
• Improve mill efficiency through continued research projects such as mill extraction tests, bagasse boiler operation studies, optimization of low-grade boiling procedures, production and storage of very-high-purity and very-low-color sugar, survey of final molasses, syrup and juice
• Provide laboratory analysis for the local factories during the harvest, including the molasses survey and particle size analysis.

Audubon Sugar Institute Facts

• 3 faculty and 8 research associates.
• The institute has been very successful in securing grants from state and federal agencies and private industry.
• The Audubon Sugar Institute has a long history and tradition of educating many sugar technologists and sugar engineers for more than 100 years.
• The Audubon Sugar Institute is a center of excellence for teaching, research and extension.
• The institute is ideally located near the Louisiana sugar industry.

Future Plans

The Audubon Sugar Institute is looking to revitalize training and education in sugar technology that is world-class without neglecting research aimed at determining commercial feasibility of new processes and development of technologies suitable for local industries.

It also is seeking to reestablish its pilot facility as an ideal test bed to demonstrate the scalability of new technologies developed through research at the bench level. Novel uses for waste products from sugar processing is one example of such focused research that is geared to enable a diversified sugar-processing industry. The pilot facility will further enhance the short course and education program to attract, retain and develop world-class staff to serve the sugar processing industry with the ability to transfer new technology through demonstration and optimization.

Another significant plan is to address as many aspects of industrial development for new byproducts from Louisiana crops as possible, encompassing areas from handling and storage of feedstock to processing to optimization for biofuel specialty chemical production; and from product conceptualization through development to economic analysis and marketability.