Smyrna times., 1878-04-17

The people of Maine, as the Bulletin has |
had occasion to record several times of late, |
are greatly interested in the subject of beet |
sugar, and last Saturday week, Edward NJ. |
Gennert, of New York, exhibited to an APP
preciative audience in Portland a model of
a factory for the production of this inter
esting saccharine substance. The audience
included Governor Coanor and several
members of the council, Mr.. Baxter of the
Portland Packing Company, Mr.. Sparrow,
of the Portland Sugar Refinery, and num-
Der of other prominent gentlemen. Mr..
Gennert, who exhibited this model, is the
gentleman who in 1862, built the best sugar
factory in Chatsworth, ILL.,, and i'll 1869 the
sugar works at Warrenton, in Germany.
The model represented a sugar factory
divided into three parts. The first part is
kiln for drying the green or fresh beet
after it has been sliced by an ordinary root
cutter. When fuel is scarce and very costly
this is not very advantageous process, but
in a country where fuel is cheap it has
great advantages The beetS so dried are
about one-half pure sugar, with the wooden
fibre impurities and 10 per cent of moisture
mixed. The preserving quality of sugar is
we'll understood; it can, therefore, not sur
prise anybody that dried beets, which con-
sist of one-half pure sugar, can be kept for
any number of years in as good state as
when first dried. In drying the beets the
weight is reduced four-fifths, in other words
it requires five tons of fresh beets to make
one ton of dried ones. The erection of
one of these drying kilns is calculated to
cost about 81 900.
The second part of the beet sugar factory
consists of the battery for extracting: the
twelve vats, three and a-half feet in diameter
by seven feet high, are arranged like ter
race so that the saccharine matter flows
from one into the other, becoming more
and more completely developed as it passes
from one vat to the other. When it has
passed them all, gallon oft contains about
five pounds of sugar and has specific
gravity of % per cent, Bennie. The work
is continuous and goes on:without Interrupt
ton, extracting about 10000 pounds per
day of fresh beets, producing $4,000 pounds
of raw sugar.
The third part of the factory is for con.
centrating the beet juice by the process of
crystallization. The entire factory, with
eight drying kilns, is estimated to cost
$4,000 and to produce easily over 100000
pounds of beet sugar per year. Mr.. Gennert
exhibited about so samples of beet sugar,
including loaf rock candy and granulated,
as well as all the different grades of raw
sugar down to the lowest brown. Speci-
mems of the different varieties of sugar
beets were on exhibition in painting, for
either light or heavy soil.
If a considerable part Of the $l00,000000
which the United States pay annually for
foreign sugar could be diverted to the
pockets of American farmers by means oil
the beet sugar industry, it would be con.
summation devoutly to be thankful for.
Governor Connor and the Executive
Council were so well pleased with the exhi
bition that they made a contract with Mr.
Gennert to establish a manufactory of the
kind in Maine under the act of the Legis
lature of 1877, which grants bounty of
per cent pound upon all sugar made from
beets. raised in that State. 1t is reported
that the sugar refining building of J. B
Brown & Sons, of Portland, will be con
verted into factory for the purpose indi
Gated, and that Mr.. Gennert will make
preparations to engage extensively in the
manufacture of beet sugar if satisfactory
contracts can be made with farmers fo
raising the amount of beets required. Tht
action of the Council requires the factory
to be in running order during the presen
year.-B0StOn Bulletin.