Beet Root Sagan The soil and climate of this country in many localities are admirably adapted to the cultivation of the sugar beet, the best of which is of the white Silesian variety, and there will be no lack of material. The greatest obstacle to the increase of the industry in the United States is the difficulty of procuring workmen skilled in the crystalizing process. The estab lishments now in existence here were first operated by workmen imported from Europe. Most of the operations in manufacturing vegetable sugar are nearly the same as the sugar-cane juice is subjected to, but it is in rendering the beet-root juice crystallizable that the utmost skill and nicety are required. This is owing to its greater rawness and the smaller relative proportion of sugar it contains than cane juice.
Marggrof, a Berlin chemist, was the first person who extracted sugar from beet juice. This was in 1747, but the manufacture was not developed in Europe until about fifty years later. It was first commenced in France, in consequence of the Emperor Napoleon's scheme for excluding British colonial produce. The process has since been much improved, and beet sugar now com petes on nearly equal terms with cane sugar in the markets of the world.
The white Silesian beet is preferred in Europe for sugar making, as it yields a juice richer in sugar and more free from salts than that of other kinds. The weight of the largest ones is about five pounds each, and the yield per acre in France and Belgium is fourteen or fifteen tons. When the leaves of the beet begin to die, the roots are dug, the heads cut off and the beets thrown together and covered to protect them from light and frost. They may be kept for some time. In the factory, the beets are washed clean in a cage revolving on a horizontal axis and partly immersed in water, and when washed they are discharged by the action of the machine itself. A grating-machine of the form of a rotating drum, the inner surface of which is studded with teeth, tears open the cellular tissues and frees the juice. The pulp is then subjected to powerful hydraulic pressure and the resultant is ready for the crystallizing process,which is, of course, the same as that employed in cane-juice crystallization, requiring, however, as has been said, much greater care and skill.
Maceration has also been employed to separate the juice, by -cutting the beets into thin slices and letting several charges of water pass through a cistern containing them, the water gradually
.acquiring density by taking up the beet juice. By process, the juice is rendered very weak and is apt to ferment, and requires much fuel to concentrate it. At Waghausel there is an immense factory, where a process is employed in which the beet is cut up into small rectangular pieces and dried upon floors, after which the sugar is extracted by infusion or maceration.
When the beet sugar is refined, it is almost impossible to distin guish it from cane sugar, either by the taste or the appearance. Five tons of clean roots produce about four-and-a-half hundred weight of coarse sugar, which gives about 160 pounds of double refined sugar and 60 pounds of inferior lump sugar ; the residuum is molasses, from which spirits are distilled.
Grape Sugar, or Starch Sugar, so called because it is readily obtained by the action of diluted acid on a hot solution of starch, is known also as Glucose, which is a constituent of the juice of grapes, plums, cherries, figs, and other sweet fruits, also in honey. It is not infrequently found as a healthy and sometimes unhealthy constituent in the animal world. Glucose can be obtained chemi cally from starch and from dextrine, but the simplest mode of pre paring pure glucose is by treating honey with cold rectified spirits and extracting the uncrystallizable sugar ; the residue being dis solved in water and the solution decolorized with animal charcoal and then allowed to crystallize. In Europe it is largely manufac tured from starch by mixing starch and water at a temperature of 130°, allowing it to flow slowly into a receptacle containing water acidulated with one per cent. of sulphuric acid and kept at the boiling point. Thus in the short space of half an hour the starch is converted into sugar. The liquid is next drawn off and the sul phuric acid neutralized by gradually adding chalk, till efferves cence has ceased. A deposition of sulphate of lime takes place, and the aqueous solution after concentration by evaporation is al lowed to crystallize. The molasses is drained off and the sugar is dried at a gentle heat in a current of air. Dr. Muspratt, in his Chemistry Applied to Arts and Manufactures, says: "The chief use to which glucose is applied in Europe is for the manufacture of beer and a coarse kind of alcohol, which is said to be exten sively converted into French brandy by the addition of oil of rais ins, coloring matter, etc." Glucose is extensively used in this country in the manufacture of candies, and for mixing with cane sugar.