Something about sugar : $b Its history, growth, manufacture and distribution — John Shaqi
Something about sugar : $b Its history, growth, manufacture and distributionRolph, George M. (George Morrison)
History
Something about sugar : $b Its history, growth, manufacture and distribution
Rolph, George M. (George Morrison)
Sugar
The bin into which the raw sugar is dumped holds enough sugar to keep
the refinery supplied during the twenty-four hours run, but the entire
quantity is “cut in” during the day. The advantages of this arrangement
are that it avoids any delay in operation due to mechanical troubles
with conveyors and because more efficient work is accomplished during
the daylight hours. The employés prefer to work on the day shift and,
wherever possible, night work is avoided.
From the bottom of the bin the sugar falls into a mixing machine, called
the mingler. This is an oblong tank with a semi-cylindrical bottom, near
which is a revolving horizontal shaft, with arms or paddles attached
which thoroughly stir and mix the sugar with syrup that is added at this
point. The reason for using syrup instead of water is that the former,
being a saturated sugar solution, does not melt the sugar as water would.
The resultant mixture, called magma, looks a good deal like a soft,
brown mortar. It is, in fact, raw-sugar crystals swimming in syrup.
This consistency is needed to allow the magma to work freely in the
centrifugals, the next operation. Most of the impurities contained in raw
sugar are superficial, that is, adhering to the outside of the grain.
They may be more or less readily removed by washing the surfaces of the
crystals with water.
From the mingler the magma drops to the floor below into centrifugal
machines running at the rate of 1100 revolutions per minute. A “charge”
consists of about nine hundred pounds of magma. As the machine fills, the
centrifugal force causes the magma to rise in a vertical wall around the
inside circumference of the basket, at the same time throwing off the
syrup that was added on the floor above, and leaving in the machine about
five hundred pounds of the raw sugar as it came from the plantation.
Water is then sprayed into the machine under high pressure, through a
nozzle which divides it into very fine particles and throws it against
the wall of sugar in the machine. The water, passing through the sugar
by the centrifugal force, washes each face of each crystal and carries
off the impurities, together with a certain amount of sugar. The quantity
of water used per machine in each filling is from one to two and a half
gallons, depending upon the quality of the sugar.
This water, now a syrup, with the impurities and sugar it contains, is
drawn from the machine, part of it being pumped to the floor above to mix
with new raw sugar coming in. The remainder is treated, filtered, boiled
and made into raw sugar, which, in turn, goes direct to the melt or
through the washing process again. The result of this washing is that the
purity of Hawaiian raw sugar is raised from about 97.2 to 99.2 per cent,
and there now remains but 0.8 per cent of impurities to be removed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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