By permission of Truman G. Palmer, Esq.
GENERAL INTERIOR VIEW OF BEET-SUGAR FACTORY—SHOWING FILTER PRESSES IN FOREGROUND; PANS AND EVAPORATORS IN REAR
The beets are delivered from the washer into an elevator, which takes them to a point near the top of the factory and discharges them into automatic weighing and recording scales. From the scales the beets fall by gravity into the slicing machines.
EXTRACTION OF JUICE, SLICING AND DIFFUSION
The slices are made in various shapes and forms. The slicing machines consist of revolving, corrugated knives which cut the beets into long, thin slices or “cossettes.” The object is to produce slices which expose the greatest amount of surface, and yet sufficiently firm to lie not too closely together when placed in the diffusion battery, thereby preventing the circulation of the diffusion liquors. The cossettes are conveyed on an endless belt, or through a hopper, to the cells of the diffusion battery.
As the term implies, the juice in the beet is extracted by diffusion, and not by crushing, as in the case of cane. When two liquids, separated by a membrane, are brought in direct contact with each other and allowed to stand for a time, they mix uniformly without the assistance of mechanical or other force.
Beets are made up of a great number of plant cells, the walls of which are porous membranes. These cells are placed in contact with water or juice of lesser sugar content than the juice in the plant cell, in consequence of which the juice is gradually diffused from the beet and carried away in the circulating water which is added. When this water, or rather juice, has reached a certain stage of concentration, it is drawn out of the cells and sent to the next stage in the process of manufacture.
A diffusion battery, or the apparatus in which the process of diffusion is carried on, consists of a number of tanks or cells, usually from ten to fourteen, cylindrical in shape and terminating in truncated cones provided with covers. There are two ways of arranging the cells of a diffusion battery; in the one case the cells are placed in a straight line; in the other they are grouped in a circle. These cells are filled with cossettes in rotation, and water is introduced into the one in which the cossettes were first placed.