What happened to Steffen House, thus becoming a critical feature of the sugar beet mill, especially in Europe? A Steffen House is considered crucial to the economic success of the sugar beet plant, a key player in the building and operation of the sugar beet business in the early 20th century, Henry Oxnard, saying he would not accept a contract to build a sugar mill unless it included the Steffen House .
The key measure of the performance of the beet factory and subsequently the percentage of sucrose in the molasses. The emergence of any sucrose in molasses is evidence that sugars intended for storage, ultimately, in molasses. In Oxnard's day, molasses were considered a waste product and were therefore often poured into the river with a sugar mill. Typically, in standard plants that do not have the Steffen House, or in this more modern, ion exchange process, bit molasses will contain fifty percent sucrose, an unacceptable loss to those involved in bit mill management. The plant supervisor refers to the presence of sugar in the molasses as "purity". The high degree of privilege, then, reflects the high sugar losses to molasses - the same as pouring money into the gutter.
Molecular production is generally equivalent to five percent of processed beet, so a mill carrying 1,000,000 tons of beet can result in the production of 50,000 tonnes of molasses that would contain about 25,000 tonnes of sugar that would have a market value of ten million dollars, assuming sugar is sold at $ .20 per pound, after manufacturing costs. It should not be said that the prevention of sugar loss to molasses is a major challenge for the beekeeper. From the beginning, the technology of capturing sugar allowed by the current equipment, the next curative was to extract sugar from molasses. It's the role of Steffen House.
The Steffen process is a method of extracting sugar from molasses created by Carl Steffen of an Austrian-born Vienna who modernized the process in 1883 while engaged in the manufacture of sugar in Moravia. Although the method has several variations, the process initially starts with melting the molasses with water (enough to make 5-12% sucrose solution) and cooling it to very low temperatures (below 18 degrees C) and then fine powder (Calcium oxide) in quantity which is sufficient to establish a 130 per cent relationship to the sucrose content continuously supplemented by a uniform and slow rate of turbulence. The sugar in the molecule combines with the lime and the capsule is formed which is insoluble in the liquid. The conditions are then separated and washed in filter filters. The cake from the filter (sakccharate of lime) is mixed with sweet water to a creamy consistency and takes the place of lime milk in the process of carbonation.
About ninety percent of the original sugar in the beet was extracted at factories using the Steffen process. In some facilities, the waste water from the Steffen process, which is rich in fertilizers (especially potassium sulfate), is used to irrigate the soil next to the plant. Structures designed to accommodate equipment used in the Steffen process are commonly referred to in the industry as the "Steffen House".
The Steffen process gained rapid popularity in Europe but was found to be less favorable in the United States as it was probably more sophisticated in its chemistry than the process introduced at the bit factory until then. The process was first introduced in 1888 in Watsonville, California. It is a small pilot plant with three 5-foot refrigerators supplied by the German Grevenbroich Machinery Company. Grevenbroich eventually supplied the equipment to three pioneering California factories, Watsonville, Los Alamitos, and Chino and continued to supply Oxnard Steffen process equipment until the company and Kilby Manufacturing of Cleveland, Ohio, began producing better models a few years later.
In the United States, the list of successful chemists holding key positions in the bit factory has been slim. Often the factory authorities try to try and make the right technology in the past, preferring the methods derived from experience rather than scholarship. Guided by practical experience rather than theory, they will unknowingly reject ideas and methods that they have no basis for understanding. The Watsonville experimental Steffens process is not widely used, for example, because the factory authorities "do not believe it."
The main attraction of the Steffen process lies in the comparative advantage. Molasses was then an unwanted commodity and presented itself as a waste issue of a commercially viable product. The extraction of sugar from molasses is considered a good value from something released into the river, a practice that dates back to the early days of the United States beetle industry being condemned by river dependent people for other industrial purposes, including fishing. At that time, the fins, which were basically sugar syrup that went through the mill several times and with the process of removing most of the sugar residue containing fifty percent sucrose, found a variety of markets. Initially, it was a source of ethyl alcohol but has lost favor over the years due to the low cost of foreign crude oil. Interest in ethyl alcohol production was recovering in the 1970s when crude oil prices rose. Molasses are also a major raw material for the production of yeast and are a major source of the production of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and citric acid. However the amount demanded by the consumer is lower than the quantity provided by the country's beet sugar company. The price of molasses is very low as a result.
The 1970s attitude toward factory waste changed from public acceptance to the near-universal objection that because good factories (providing useful products and economic strength) of their waste products had to be tolerated. Therefore, the Steffens process that produces liquid wastes containing high alkaline and pH and high organic content and foul odor compounds is not desirable. A Steffens House releases wastewater for up to eight hundred percent of the total amount of molasses processed.
Various studies have shown that it is possible to improve the strength of odors derived from Steffen residues. However, the cost of installing and operating an effective system will offset the economic benefits provided by the process. Thus, factory managers using the Steffens process began to shut them down, and those who wanted the benefits of the process appeared elsewhere. In addition to its deficiency in the environment, Steffens processes only about 60% of the sugar in molasses. Sugar manufacturers are beginning to look elsewhere for solutions to the task of recovering sugar from molasses. Thinking of their thoughts is a better idea to avoid making molasses in the first place. They turn into ion exchange, a process that would hinder the production of molasses in the traditional sense.
Ion exchange, or deionization, is a method of reducing impurities from juices which in turn leads to increased sugar extraction. The principle of ion exchange has been known for over 125 years but is rarely used in the sugar beet industry because of its unfortunate nature of increasing the sugar content of sodium juice which impedes the ability of the crystals to be crystallized. However, sugar manufacturers today have turned to the first successful ion-exclusion chromatography technique to produce high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This process is based on the exclusion of ionic compounds and the incorporation of nonionic compounds.
Molasses, then, was considered a thief who captured a large amount of precious sugar during the sugar making process, eventually, to give up his plunder through exchange of ions where the sugar recovery rate reached ninety percent compared to sixty percent in the old Steffens home and with no environmental impact negative. And another bonus is waiting for sugar factories to turn into ion exchange.
Modern factories starting in the 1990s began to produce betaine from molasses, a valuable food additive with the added medicinal benefits. The University of Maryland Medical Center stated in one of its studies that cheap wines that use beet sugar to increase alcohol content, contain betaine. Some experts suggest that this may explain why French wine drinkers tend to have low rates of heart disease despite a high fat diet and cholesterol. However, more fun is the value of betaine as a supplement for chickens and pigs. Some experiments show that adding betaine to the feed improves performance. Also, studies with pigs show the effect of betaine on energy metabolism and a sharp increase in growth hormone. Humans are also looking for the use of betaine as a supplement under a different name, trimethylglycine or TMG.
As a result, the Steffen process, once a sugar saver, has resulted in falling due to environmental concerns and costs but has become a way for more efficient and environmentally friendly ion exchange.
Source:
MAIN HIGHLIGHTS Sugar Company, Sugar Sugar Production Technology, West Great Sugar Company, Denver, Colorado, June 30, 1920 - a instruction manual provided by D. J. Roach for use by the company's beet mill operations.
GUTLEBEN, Dan, Sugar Tramp-1954- Michigan, Published by: Bay City Duplicating Co, San Francisco, 1954
McGINNIS, R.A. (Ed.) 1982, Beet Sugar Technology, Fort Collins, Colorado, Beet Sugar Development Foundation
The Steffen House - A Molasses Desugarization Effort That Couldn't Gain Traction
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