Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1890-12-15
SORGHUM SUGAR.
New Process Of Manufacture
Which Looks Successful.
THE PROBLEM SOLVED BY ALCOHOL

Result oil Experiments Made by the
Granger Department-French Method
ofRaising Babies Introduced at the Cap
ital-A Youngster that Got into Hot
Water soon as 1t Was Born, but
Fiourishes Exceeiingly--The President
to Give Congress Some Financial Ad-
vice-OniciaI Notes.
WASHINGTON CRY, Dec. 15.-The an
nual report OF the chief of the chemical di
vision, department of agriculture, con
tains ar account. written by Dr. Wiley, of
process recently perfected as the result
OF experiment in the chemical laboratory
of the department which must be o. great
interest to sorghum growers, and to the
people generally. DR. Wiley's report recites
some of the various difficulties which have
been found hitherto in an economic manu-
facture of sugar from sorghum, and indi-
cater that the solution of the question was
to be found in some process which would
separate as nearly as possible the gummy
amorphous bodies from the juice without
precipitating the sugar
Alcohol Does Its Work.
@HS 0hO"h piOpCtty VI dtCOuOI DrO
duce precipitation in the juice was made
use of in further study of this problem
and experiments were undertaken and con
tinued which have finally secured the most
satisfactory results. ''The difficulties, "
says the report, (which have been encoun-
tered in manufacturing sugar from sor
ghum juices have been solely due to the
presence of those gums Their removal
therefore, if it can be accomplished on &
manufacturing basis, would at once place
sorghum in u high rank as a sugar pro-
ducing plant. There seems to be no diff
Guilty about the matter. and besides, the al
cohol used can be nearly all recovered by
distillation.
Getting Value Out of Waste.
Another encouraging feature is that the
gummy substance separated by the pro
cess Is itself fermentable, yielding almost
half its weight i'll alcohol 1t appears that
from the gum itself, then, sufficient
amount of alcohol may possibly be de
rived to supply the whole waste which
would take place in the process of manu-
facture, and any additional quantity of al
cohol needed could be obtained from the
| molasses after the extraction of all the
crystallizable sugar. In other words, q
proper stock of alcohol once provided the
wastage therein in the process of manu-
facture could be, in great measure, if not
| entirely, supplied by the refuse matter
which would otherwise be waste
An Important Advantage.
Again, by the adoption of this process
DIR. Wiley says, the period of manufacture
the shortness of which has always been
| one OF the troubles in the making o.
| sorghum sugar can be considerably
heightened. The usual period for the
manufacture OF sugar, now practically
| confined to the months of September and
October, could be devoted exclusively to
the extraction of the juice and the making
| of the syrup, which can be easily preserved
and worked into sugar subsequently,
| either through the winter months or in
the spring, when the factory could again
be set in operation. The larger storage
facilities required by this means will be
far more than offset by the fact that the
whole of the apparatus for manufacture
could be built on a smaller scale.
Increase of Yield of Sugar
Last, but by no means least, the increase
of yield of sugar from the juice is nearly
100 per cent. In order to utilize this meth
cd 1t will be necessary TO take the tax of
the alcohol used in this process. Having
been discovered by the department the
process is unpatentable, and goes to the
people free of royalty or anything of that
| description. DIR. Wiley urges that the de
partment be permitted TO carry on the
work on small scale, and thinks that the
grant of $50, 0oG which he asks would be a
profitable investment