A NEW METHOD OF SEPARATING CREAM PROM MILK.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 14, 29 May 1880, Page 4

A NEW METHOD OF SEPARATING CREAM PROM MILK.

The estimation of the quantity of cream contained in milk can now be made very accurately and rapidly (writes the Paris correspondent of the Southland Times), by means of centrifugal force. Attach the handle of a can filled with milk to a cord, hold the other extremity of the latter in the hand, and twirl as if for a sling. The cream, lighter than the rest of the milk, will accumulate on the surface free from all liquid, and more quickly than if in a state of repose ; the time will even be lessened in proportion as the revolutions are rapid. When the milk has a temperature of 59 to 68 d( gcees ¥„ the separation of the cream takes place in fifteen minutes, at the rate of 600 revolutions per minute. At the same time the quantity of water added to the milk for adulterating purposes can be ascertained. M. Gembloux havflig tested that pure milk contains 10 per cent, of cream, added one, then a second tenth of water, and when whisked the cream represented but nine and eight per cent of the volume of the milk. Further, when whirled in the cylindrical churn, the contents formed three distinct kyere— -cream, -water, and sfeim milk. The same centrifugal test was applied to butter, maintained in the liquid state by means of hot water ; the buttei separated into three states towards the circumference of the churn— fatty matter, caseine, and salt water; it was in the latter all the mineral adulterations lodged. It was at the Exhibition of Vienna that an apparatus for separating cream from milk by centrifugal action was first made known. It is to M. Lefeldt that the honor reverts for applying the system on a vast scale by means of a turbine cylinder making 800 rotations per minute, when the cream is formed round the axle of the machine, after which comes the skim milk, and then the impurities, forming, as it were, three rings or zones. Other skim milk is introduced, which forces up the cream to run over, and thus out of, the cylinder. M. Lawal's Swedish

skimmer in so constructed, that in proportion as the cream and skim milk are separated, they pass off by the entrance of fresh milk. In the co-ope-rative dairy at Kiel, 4000 quarts of milk, the produce of 550 cows, are centrifugally skimmed per day.