It will be remembered that in the synthesis of sucrose, which consists
of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, there are none of the plant-food
elements used which are sought for in commercial fertilizers. These
are used only in building the fibrous stalk of the cane and they may
all be recovered in the bagasse and cane-juice impurities. The carbon,
hydrogen, and oxygen which are used practically all come from the
air and water.
It is a custom to-day to cart this ash to piles or depressions some
distance from the factory. In some places it is thrown into the river,
or cast into the sea--an absolute loss.
Planters must not depend upon commercial fertilizers for their supply
of plant-food material, when there is such an abundance of natural
fertilizer being wasted. The cost of the artificial fertilizers in
many cases is considered prohibitive and often unnecessary. In order
to build up a great sugar industry here, the material at hand must be
used, while money should be spent for modern apparatus and equipment.
Molasses.
The dark-colored viscous substance remaining after the large crystals
of sucrose have been removed is called molasses. This contains small
crystals of sucrose, which has passed through the perforations of
the centrifugal screens, sucrose in solution, glucose, fructose,
and other organic substances, such as pectin bodies, albumenoids,
coloring substances, etc., besides the inorganic matter constituting
the ash upon incineration of the molasses.
The composition of the molasses varies with the working of each
factory, also with the condition of cane, time of harvest, etc. The
juice from green cane and that which has reached ultramaturity will
contain a higher percentage of invert sugar and organic non-sugars than
a properly matured cane. Then factories that have ample boiling-house
provision, and crystallizers as well as magma tanks, will be able to
send out a molasses with lower purity, thus recovering more of the
crystallizable sugar.
In any case there will be some molasses produced, and this constitutes
a valuable sugar-house by-product, if properly cared for. It may
be disposed of in one of several forms, namely, as a human food,
a stock feed, a source of alcohol, factory fuel, and a fertilizer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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