ON THE MANUFACTURE OF BEET SUGARS.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIII, Issue 3191, 8 October 1867, Page 4

ON THE MANUFACTURE OF BEET SUGARS.

To the Editor of tho Daily Sodthbrn Gkoss. Sib,— Your well-directed efforts to secure the attention of our commercial and agricultural classes to the profitable development of the vast " industrial resources" of this our adopted country, are worthy of all praise, and should, in due time, unless antagonised by malign influences altogether beyond our control, be productive of good and permanent results. 'Tis true that a crisis like the present is not the most favourable time for the calm reception and ( wise development and utilisation of the sage teachings of economical philosophy ; nor can the mind of the public in general, when rudely agitated by alternate hopes and fears, at one moment prostrated by the gloomy forebodings of impending ruin, and at another unduly elevated by the brilliant hopes of golden prosperity, become deeply impressed with the most forcible dissertation upon the hitherto incontrovertible maxim of political economy, that " the persistent employment of productive labour is the only source of abiding prosperity." In your journal of the 14th instant, you did me the favour to give prominence to a communication upon the " cultivation of the sugar beet ;" and having since then obtained some valuable information upon the most recent improvements in the manufacture of beet sugar, I beg to communicate the same to those of your readers who may take an interest in the subject, but who may not have had the opportunity of deriving information from the source from which I obtained it. t In the Enginemnng Journal, published by Zerah Colbourn, date June 28th, 1867, there is a full description of the process of obtaining sugar by diffusion.'as discovered by Mr. Robert, in Austria, hence known as ' Robert's Diffusion Process." Samples of sugar obtained by this process have contrasted very remarkably, in many respects, with those obtained from India, when placed side by side in the Paris Exhibition. Mr. Robert's system is thus described : " The plants or roots are cut up into thin square slices by means of very sharp and clean cutters, so as not to destroy the cellular structure of the plant, but only to produce a large surface upon which the liquids employed for extraction can act. The slices are filled into large vessels, and covered with water at an elevated temperature, the latter varying with the circumstances of the case. The water in contact with the cells of the beets or canes extracts from them a certain proportion of _ sugar by the natural process of endosmosis and exosmosis, so that a cell containing a solution of sugar and surrounded by pure water will, after a certain time, contain a weaker saccharine solution, while the water outside will have taken up some of the sugar contained in the cell. If carried to the extreme, the liquids will exchange contents until the same solution will exist both inside the cell and outside. Mr. Robert combines a series of several vessels, all filled with beet-root or sugarcane slices, and passes water through them in systematic order and succession. The order he follows is, to let the most concentrated solutions pass over the fresh beets, and then to pass weaker and weaker solutions over them as their contents of sugar become more and more reduced ; so that the fresh water comes first upon the slices which have been longer under treatment and are therefore poor in sugar, afterwards passing over slices containing more and sugar, in regular succession, until at last it comes upon fresh slices and attains the highest degree of concentration which the process is capable of affording. Six or eight vessels thus working in rotation, so as to make the process continuous, are called a "battery." For themanufacture of beet-root sugar, Mr. Robert's process has now been in operation for about four years, and there are about thirty factories now using this system in Germany, Austria, and Prussia, with the most complete commercial success. There are some other works of the kind now in course of construction in Belgium, and others are about to be established in France very shortly.— -I have, &c, Thos. Aickin, MJD. September 28, 1867. pg. — Should any of your readers desire to peruse the whole article upon this interesting subject, which is too lengthy for insertion in in your paper, I shall be happy to place the journal containing it at their disposal.