NEW BEET SUGAR PROCESS

Evening Star, Issue 19765, 16 January 1928, Page 3

NEW BEET SUGAR PROCESS

An important discovery in the methods of extracting sugar from beet was described to a Press representative recently by an official of the Oxford University Institute, of Agricultural Engineering, which, under the guidance of Dr B. J. Owen, has been conducting some notable investigations at the sugar beet factory at ICynsham, near Oxford. “One of the greatest disadvantages which has attended the discovery of the cxtrad.nro of sugar from beet,” said an official, “ has been the pollution of rivers by effluents from beet sugar factories. The organic sediment in the effluents causes putrefaction, which absorbs tbc oxygen in the water, and lias an injurious effect on fish, besides rendering streams unfit as sources of drinking water. The normal sugar factory in Great Britain, operating the diffusion process for three months in the year at flic rate of 1,000 tons of beets per day, discharges approximately ,142 gallons of efllucnt daily from all its processes. As the

Jesuit of a scries of experiments which the Oxford University Institute of Agricultural Engineering has carried out, a. method Inis been discovered whereby this putrefaction can ho avoided. The beet is dried at once, and the result is that the sugar can be extracted at any time during the year, instead of the work having to be crowded into the first three months of the year, as has been the case up to the present. The amount of water used is reduced considerably, and theie is hardly any effluent at all. This discovery has had a tremendous effect on the problem of employment in beet factories. Instead of the men being turned off for nine months in the year there will now he regular employment all the year round.”