DMC Stands For Devastating Mic Control

The King Of Rock

It was 1985, just six ephemeral being removed from the incident known as Disco Demolition Night in Chicago everywhere a frenzied crowd of thousands gathered in Comiskey Park with despise in their eyes and hearts. The abhorrent mob assembled for the sole purpose of sealing the fate of the long permanent disco movement by setting their albums and cassettes of the composition on fire en masse. It was a revolt in the truest sense, unlike any unenthusiastic show towards a fastidious style of composition before. This was not unadorned a slip in the charts; it was an execution.

Disco was dead.

The era of heavy metal had really begun. The Bee Gees, now the official former kings of the airwaves, would be Stayin' Alive no longer. Their bass lines and high leaning vocal stylings were on fire in a fiery Disco Inferno that an all too lucky slew of long haired rockers was throwing gasoline upon.

It wasn't Kung Fu Fighting. No. The war linking disco and rock that raged from the mid seventies throughout the mid eighties was finally over. Rock prevailed and claimed the throne at the top of the mountain, its sole challenger vanquished.

Who else dare challenge the king?

Jazz? "Please..."

Blues? "Come again?"

Country? "Are you serious?"

How about rap? "Rap? What's rap?"

Rap was still very much a new and moderately unknown commodity, largely unseen by the mainstream audience, critics, and radio stations. Most of the rising form of music's sales could not even be tracked with any accuracy in view of the fact that most of the artists were promotion their material out of the trunks of their cars, unable to reliable a record deal.

Distributors stared blank eyed at rappers as they listened to demos. The supposed professionals didn't have the thought to see and be with you the composition that would eventually launch a revolution. Backed into a corner, the only way to go forward was apparent.

A few courageous entrepreneurs ongoing their own rap labels. One was known as Sugarhill Records. It received modest delivery and was the mark that unrestricted what has been called by many "The first real rap song." Rappers Delight, by the Sugarhill Gang, was the best received rap release up to that point by far.

Looking back, some define the moment as the official initiation of rap composition being that the classic release received airplay, reached digit thirty eight on the composition charts, and was available in many stores.
The Sugarhill Gang was knocking on the door to legitimate entry into the composition world, but a twenty a touch rapper known simply as DMC was not content with banging his knuckles against the door. He had his hand wrapped around the doorknob and was twisting it open.

There would be no knocking for Darryl Mcdaniels who, by the side of with fellow rapper Joseph "Run" Simmons, and DJ Jam Master Jay, unrestricted the self titled Run DMC album in the spring of 1984 on Profile Records.

It seemed like no one knew what to make of it. Run DMC was not anything like anything or anyone before them. The assemble of three black men from Hollis Queens defied any and all classification. They weren't rock, even if they had thrilling guitar in some of their songs. They weren't disco.

What are they? What style of composition is Run DMC?

"They're rap."

"Oh, rap. I reckon I heard of that."

The trio was at a snail's pace gaining an audience, catching on with their catchy amalgamation of back and forth rhyming linking Run and DMC laid over the skillful record scratching and 808 drum apparatus beats of Jay. Throw in a few samples and an occasional guitar riff and you had a fresh new sound that cried out to be listened to.

Run DMC would not be denied, nor could that historic first relief which has sold well over three million units. Things didn't explode yet for Run DMC, but that was just a matter of time.

The door was cracked open, but rap composition still just a foot inside. Rock composition was still looking down the mountain, unworried, at rap composition and laughing. The reigning king felt no threat. There could be no challenge to the throne unless someone from the rap world was equipped to step up huge time.

Enter DMC the boards left.

Fade In:

Slavery may have been abolished in 1862 and there was a supposed equality among the races that was talked about, but a instant glance of the composition charts was all that was looked-for to show the flagrant on terrible terms still present. White artists dominated the airwaves. The digit of black rock groups was smallest and the digit of them that hit the charts was right to nonexistent.

Run DMC eventually changed the face of the composition world and helped to join the gap of racism by promoting racial equality - not favoritism in either management - and becoming celebrities in an era that embraced the rigorous contrary of what they embodied.
Forget rock. Forget rap.

Run DMC transcended musical style and classification and in doing so changed the look of composition world in one chief moment when Darryl Mcdaniels summoned up enough testicular fortitude for the entire rap community and performed an act that held with it the ramifications of painting a bulls eye on his back. He straightforwardly risked being a dead man.

It seemed like suicide.

During a year when sales of rock composition to a predominantly Caucasian audience were in the millions, Run DMC unrestricted their sophomore album. The title footstep facial advent a confident DMC spewing five words, without the addendum of music, which changed the musical scenario forever.

The childish man who went on to inspire so many to come after him made an irrefutably plotting provoking proclamation when he rapped five unadorned terms acapella into a microphone so many being ago.

In the world of politics and government, it was Martin Luther King with the well-known words, "I have a dream."

The world of composition has its equivalent and the submit to belongs to Darryl Mcdaniels. His five words, just as powerfully as King's four, take up again to inspire as they get to a total new audience. No one can not remember the first time they heard DMC utter the last terms anyone ever probable to hear from a black man's mouth.

"I'm the king of rock!"

Darryl Mcdaniels was a legend.

The proclamation was so powerful; it was used to name the album and was largely reliable for the eventual platinum status.

DMC kept up the theme with his next lyric, "There is none higher," just in case someone missed the fact that he was indeed the king of rock and the tremendous thrilling guitar that pulsed throughout the footstep and the album - which can only be described as a groundbreaking masterpiece - was not enough to persuade them.

Rock composition was on the ropes; it looked-for to go a rope a dope if it sought after to survive. It got its help from a most dodgy source.
Rather than pick a fight, Run DMC nonstop their merging of rock and rap by extending the lime arm to a assemble of fallen from grace rockers whose best days were well in the rear them buried in the seventies. Aerosmith bent some lackluster minutes in view of the fact that and hadn't had a hit in near a decade.

Mcdaniels and his cohorts joined forces with the struggling rockers and went on to record a classic remake of one of Aerosmith's ancient hits. Walk This Way was an even larger seller the second time around and helped to catapult Run DMC's third release, Raising Hell, into international multi platinum sales.

Run DMC didn't grow to be battling with rock for musical supremacy, but if anyone was keeping score; it was obvious to see who indeed the king was.

It's been reasonably a roller coaster ride for the childish men who made Adidas a phenomenon. Since Raising Hell's relief over twenty being ago the superstars have place out four more albums all of which have achieved platinum status.

Unfortunately the trio was cut-rate to two on October 30th. 2002 when the legendary Jam Master Jay was called to his maker.
Joseph "Run" Simmons is now known as Reverend Run. The new man of the cloth, when not filming his hit actuality TV show, still finds time to rock the microphone with his regularly imitated but by no means duplicated emceeing skills. His solo relief Distortion served to fill many fan's desire for a new Run DMC recording.

DMC, being removed from his days at St. John's university, is set to contest his partner in crime and will even be featuring the Reverend on a few tracks of the King Of Rock's solo debut Checks, Thugs, & Rock -N- Roll.

Ray Mardo, under the artist name Natural Attraction, released the 15 country hit single "Get Stupid" on Radikal/Popular Records. These days the Austin Film Festival honored writer spends his time typing away screenplays and novels and internet marketing. Two of his websites are: http://www.raymardo.com [http://www.whoisthecoolestguyontheplanet.com]

The Steffen House - A Molasses Desugarization Effort That Couldn't Gain Traction

Whatever happened to the Steffen House, once a critical figure of beet sugar factories, mainly in Europe? A Steffen House was considered so essential to the economic achievement of a beet sugar factory that a chief player in the affair of building and operating beet sugar factories in the earliest days of the 20th Century, Henry Oxnard, said he would not accept a contract to erect a sugar factory unless it included a Steffen House.

A key measurement of a beet factory's routine then and now is the percent of sucrose in molasses. The advent of any sucrose in molasses is verify that sugar intended for the warehouse, refined up, instead, in molasses. In Oxnard's day, molasses was deemed a waste manufactured goods and as such was regularly poured into the rivers abutting a sugar factory. Typically, in a ordinary factory missing a Steffen House, or in this more present period, an ion-exchange process, beet molasses will consist of fifty percent sucrose, an unacceptable loss to those engaged in the management of a beet factory. Factory superintendents submit to the presence of sugar in molasses as "purity". High purities, then, imitate high sugar losses to molasses - the same as pouring cash down the drain.

Molasses production is commonly equal to five percent on beets processed, thus a factory run of 1,000,000 tons of beets could result in the production of 50,000 tons of molasses which would contain roughly 25,000 tons of sugar which would have a market regard of ten million dollars, assuming sugar is sold at $.20 per pound, net of manufacturing costs. It must go without adage that the prevention of the loss of sugar to molasses is a dominant challenge to beet factory managers. Since early, technology captured as much sugar as permitted by equipment then extant, the next curative was to take out sugar from molasses. That became the role of the Steffen House.

The Steffen administer was a mode for extracting sugar from molasses invented by Carl Steffen a Vienna born Austrian who patented the administer in 1883 while engaged in sugar manufacture in Moravia. While his mode has numerous variations, the administer in the end starts by diluting molasses with water (enough to start a key of 5-12% sucrose) and cooling it to a very low warmth (below 18 degrees C) after which finely minced lime (Calcium oxide) in sufficient quantity to establish a relationship of 130 percent to the sucrose content is continuously added with fight at a standardized and slow rate. The sugar in the molasses combines with the lime and a saccharage of lime is twisted which is unfathomable in the liquid. The saccharate was then separated and washed in a filter press. The cake from the filter press (saccharate of lime) was diverse with sweet water to a homogeny of cream and took the house of milk of lime in the carbonation process.

About ninety percent of the sugar formerly in the beet was extracted in those factories that employed the Steffen process. In some facilities, the waste water from the Steffen process, which was rich in fertilizing qualities (primarily potassium sulfate), was used for irrigating domain next-door the factory. The structure designed to accommodate the equipment employed in the Steffen administer became commonly referred to in the industry as the "Steffen's House".

The Steffen administer won instant popularity in Europe but establish less favor in the United States most likely in view of the fact that the administer was more refined in terms of its associated chemistry than any administer introduced into a beet factory up in anticipation of that time. The first such administer was installed in 1888 at Watsonville, California. It was a tiny pilot plant with three 5-foot coolers supplied by the Grevenbroich Machinery Company of Germany. Grevenbroich eventually supplied much of the equipment for three pioneer California factories, Watsonville, Los Alamitos, and Chino and nonstop to supply Oxnard's Steffen administer equipment in anticipation of his company and Kilby Manufacturing of Cleveland, Ohio, started producing improved models a few being later.

In the United States, the list of accomplished chemists who held lead positions in beet factories was slim. Often factory superintendents hewed to tried and right technology of the past, preferring methods learned from experience rather than scholarship. Guided by practical experience as a replacement for of theory, they would without malevolence reject thoughts and methods for which they lacked a basis for understanding. The Watsonville experimental Steffens administer was modest used, for example, in view of the fact that the factory director "did not believe in it."

The fundamental attraction of the Steffen administer lay in comparative advantage. Molasses was then an unwanted commodity and presented itself more as a waste issue than a salable product. Removing sugar from molasses was regarded as being paid excellent regard from a touch that would otherwise be discharged into the river, a practice that was from the earliest days of the U.S. beet industry frowned upon by those who relied upon rivers for additional industrial purposes, together with fishing. In time, molasses, which is in the end a sugar syrup that has been through the factory a digit of times and is by the administer of elimination frequently sugarbeet waste containing fifty percent sucrose, establish a variety of markets. Early on, it became a fund of ethyl alcohol but lost favor for many being in view of the fact that of the low cost of unknown crude oil. Interest in ethyl alcohol production would revive in the 1970's when crude oil prices rose. Molasses is also a principal raw material for the production of baker's proliferate and is a chief fund for the production of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and citric acid. However the volume demanded by those users was low compared to the quantity made available by the nation's beet sugar companies. The price of molasses was low as a consequence.

The 1970's saw attitudes about factory waste change from acceptance by the all-purpose public to a near total rejection of the premise that in view of the fact that of the excellent factories do (provide useful products and economic strength) their waste products must be tolerated. Thus the Steffens administer which bent liquid waste impression high alkalinity and pH as well as high organic content and consequent malodorous compounds became unwelcome. A Steffens House discharged waste water in amounts as fantastic as eight hundred percent of the volume of molasses processed.

Various studies indicated that it was doable to modernize the strength of the odors emanating from Steffen waste. The cost, however, to install and operate effective systems would offset the economic gains provided by the process. Thus factory managers who employed the Steffens administer started shutting them down and those who desired the repayment of such a process, looked elsewhere. In addendum to its shortcomings on the environmental front, the Steffens administer recovered only about 60% of the sugar in molasses. Sugar manufacturers started looking somewhere else for a key to the task of recovering sugar from molasses. Seeping into their thoughts was the thought that it would be better to dodge making molasses in the first place. They turned to ion exchange, a administer that would anticipate the making of molasses in the traditional sense.

Ion exchange, or deionization, is a mode of reducing impurities from juice which then allows for increased extraction of sugar. The attitude of ion chat has been known for more than 125 being but seldom used in the beet sugar industry in view of the fact that of its awkward habit of rising the sodium content of sugar juices which retards the ability of sugar to crystallize. However, later-day sugar manufacturers have turned to the practice of ion-exclusion chromatography which was first used fruitfully to produce high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). The administer is based on the exclusion of ionic compounds and the inclusion of nonionic compounds.

Molasses, then, once regarded as a thief who captured huge volumes of valuable sugar all through the sugar manufacturing administer had been made, at last, to give up its plunder via ion chat everywhere the sugar recovery rates get to ninety percent compared to sixty percent in the ancient Steffens House and without unenthusiastic environmental impact. And yet another bonus awaited sugar factories that turned to ion exchange.

Modern factories beginning in the 1990's started producing betaine from molasses, a valued food additive with bonus therapeutic benefits. The University of Maryland Medical Center noted in one of its studies that inexpensive wines that use beet sugar to boost the alcohol content, contain betaine. Some experts recommend that this may clarify why wine drinkers from France tend to have low rates of heart disease even with diets high in stout and cholesterol. More cogent, however, is the regard of betaine as a feed supplement for chickens and pigs. A digit of experiments show that the addendum of betaine to the feeds improves performance. Also, studies with pigs indicate an effect of betaine in energy metabolism and a astute boost in growth hormones. Humans, too, are result uses for betaine as a food supplement below a uncommon name, trimethylglycine or TMG.

Thus, the Steffen process, once the savior of sugar manufactures fell into disregard in view of the fact that of environmental and cost concerns but made way for the more efficient and environmentally friendly ion exchange.

Sources:

GREAT WESTERN SUGAR COMPANY, The Technology of Beet Sugar Manufacture, The Great Western Sugar Company, Denver, Colorado, June 30, 1920 - an instruction blue-collar prepared largely by D. J. Roach for use by the operating employees of the company's beet sugar factories.

GUTLEBEN, Dan, The Sugar Tramp-1954- Michigan, Printed by: Bay City Duplicating Co, San Francisco, 1954

McGINNIS, R.A. (Ed.) 1982, Beet Sugar Technology, Fort Collins, Colorado, Beet Sugar Development Foundation

©2010 Thomas Mahar All Rights Reserved.
About the Author:
Thomas Mahar served as Executive Vice President of Monitor Sugar Company between 1984 and 1999 and as President of Gala Food Processing, a sugar packaging company, from 1993-1998. He retired in 1999 and now devotes his free time to writing about the history of the sugar industry. A two-time winner of writing awards, he authored, Sweet Energy, The Story of Monitor Sugar Company in 2001 and maintains a blog at http://beetsugarhistory.blogspot.com/.
Contact: Thomas Mahar E-mail tkmahar@aol.com
Thomas Mahar served as Executive Vice President of Monitor Sugar Company between 1984 and 1999 and as President of Gala Food Processing, a sugar packaging company, from 1993-1998. He authored, Sweet Energy, The Story of Monitor Sugar Company in 2001, and Michigan's Beet Sugar History (Newsbeet, Fall, 2006) and is a two time winner of writing awards from the Southwestern Writers Conference for his work with historical novels set in the South and Southwest during the War Between the States era.
©2009 Thomas Mahar - all rights reserved

DMC Stands For Devastating Mic Control

The King Of Rock

It was 1985, just six ephemeral being removed from the incident known as Disco Demolition Night in Chicago everywhere a frenzied crowd of thousands gathered in Comiskey Park with despise in their eyes and hearts. The abhorrent mob assembled for the sole purpose of sealing the fate of the long permanent disco movement by setting their albums and cassettes of the composition on fire en masse. It was a revolt in the truest sense, unlike any unenthusiastic show towards a fastidious style of composition before. This was not unadorned a slip in the charts; it was an execution.

Disco was dead.

The era of heavy metal had really begun. The Bee Gees, now the official former kings of the airwaves, would be Stayin' Alive no longer. Their bass lines and high leaning vocal stylings were on fire in a fiery Disco Inferno that an all too lucky slew of long haired rockers was throwing gasoline upon.

It wasn't Kung Fu Fighting. No. The war linking disco and rock that raged from the mid seventies throughout the mid eighties was finally over. Rock prevailed and claimed the throne at the top of the mountain, its sole challenger vanquished.

Who else dare challenge the king?

Jazz? "Please..."

Blues? "Come again?"

Country? "Are you serious?"

How about rap? "Rap? What's rap?"

Rap was still very much a new and moderately unknown commodity, largely unseen by the mainstream audience, critics, and radio stations. Most of the rising form of music's sales could not even be tracked with any accuracy in view of the fact that most of the artists were promotion their material out of the trunks of their cars, unable to reliable a record deal.

Distributors stared blank eyed at rappers as they listened to demos. The supposed professionals didn't have the thought to see and be with you the composition that would eventually launch a revolution. Backed into a corner, the only way to go forward was apparent.

A few courageous entrepreneurs ongoing their own rap labels. One was known as Sugarhill Records. It received modest delivery and was the mark that unrestricted what has been called by many "The first real rap song." Rappers Delight, by the Sugarhill Gang, was the best received rap release up to that point by far.

Looking back, some define the moment as the official initiation of rap composition being that the classic release received airplay, reached digit thirty eight on the composition charts, and was available in many stores.
The Sugarhill Gang was knocking on the door to legitimate entry into the composition world, but a twenty a touch rapper known simply as DMC was not content with banging his knuckles against the door. He had his hand wrapped around the doorknob and was twisting it open.

There would be no knocking for Darryl Mcdaniels who, by the side of with fellow rapper Joseph "Run" Simmons, and DJ Jam Master Jay, unrestricted the self titled Run DMC album in the spring of 1984 on Profile Records.

It seemed like no one knew what to make of it. Run DMC was not anything like anything or anyone before them. The assemble of three black men from Hollis Queens defied any and all classification. They weren't rock, even if they had thrilling guitar in some of their songs. They weren't disco.

What are they? What style of composition is Run DMC?

"They're rap."

"Oh, rap. I reckon I heard of that."

The trio was at a snail's pace gaining an audience, catching on with their catchy amalgamation of back and forth rhyming linking Run and DMC laid over the skillful record scratching and 808 drum apparatus beats of Jay. Throw in a few samples and an occasional guitar riff and you had a fresh new sound that cried out to be listened to.

Run DMC would not be denied, nor could that historic first relief which has sold well over three million units. Things didn't explode yet for Run DMC, but that was just a matter of time.

The door was cracked open, but rap composition still just a foot inside. Rock composition was still looking down the mountain, unworried, at rap composition and laughing. The reigning king felt no threat. There could be no challenge to the throne unless someone from the rap world was equipped to step up huge time.

Enter DMC the boards left.

Fade In:

Slavery may have been abolished in 1862 and there was a supposed equality among the races that was talked about, but a instant glance of the composition charts was all that was looked-for to show the flagrant on terrible terms still present. White artists dominated the airwaves. The digit of black rock groups was smallest and the digit of them that hit the charts was right to nonexistent.

Run DMC eventually changed the face of the composition world and helped to join the gap of racism by promoting racial equality - not favoritism in either management - and becoming celebrities in an era that embraced the rigorous contrary of what they embodied.
Forget rock. Forget rap.

Run DMC transcended musical style and classification and in doing so changed the look of composition world in one chief moment when Darryl Mcdaniels summoned up enough testicular fortitude for the entire rap community and performed an act that held with it the ramifications of painting a bulls eye on his back. He straightforwardly risked being a dead man.

It seemed like suicide.

During a year when sales of rock composition to a predominantly Caucasian audience were in the millions, Run DMC unrestricted their sophomore album. The title footstep facial advent a confident DMC spewing five words, without the addendum of music, which changed the musical scenario forever.

The childish man who went on to inspire so many to come after him made an irrefutably plotting provoking proclamation when he rapped five unadorned terms acapella into a microphone so many being ago.

In the world of politics and government, it was Martin Luther King with the well-known words, "I have a dream."

The world of composition has its equivalent and the submit to belongs to Darryl Mcdaniels. His five words, just as powerfully as King's four, take up again to inspire as they get to a total new audience. No one can not remember the first time they heard DMC utter the last terms anyone ever probable to hear from a black man's mouth.

"I'm the king of rock!"

Darryl Mcdaniels was a legend.

The proclamation was so powerful; it was used to name the album and was largely reliable for the eventual platinum status.

DMC kept up the theme with his next lyric, "There is none higher," just in case someone missed the fact that he was indeed the king of rock and the tremendous thrilling guitar that pulsed throughout the footstep and the album - which can only be described as a groundbreaking masterpiece - was not enough to persuade them.

Rock composition was on the ropes; it looked-for to go a rope a dope if it sought after to survive. It got its help from a most dodgy source.
Rather than pick a fight, Run DMC nonstop their merging of rock and rap by extending the lime arm to a assemble of fallen from grace rockers whose best days were well in the rear them buried in the seventies. Aerosmith bent some lackluster minutes in view of the fact that and hadn't had a hit in near a decade.

Mcdaniels and his cohorts joined forces with the struggling rockers and went on to record a classic remake of one of Aerosmith's ancient hits. Walk This Way was an even larger seller the second time around and helped to catapult Run DMC's third release, Raising Hell, into international multi platinum sales.

Run DMC didn't grow to be battling with rock for musical supremacy, but if anyone was keeping score; it was obvious to see who indeed the king was.

It's been reasonably a roller coaster ride for the childish men who made Adidas a phenomenon. Since Raising Hell's relief over twenty being ago the superstars have place out four more albums all of which have achieved platinum status.

Unfortunately the trio was cut-rate to two on October 30th. 2002 when the legendary Jam Master Jay was called to his maker.
Joseph "Run" Simmons is now known as Reverend Run. The new man of the cloth, when not filming his hit actuality TV show, still finds time to rock the microphone with his regularly imitated but by no means duplicated emceeing skills. His solo relief Distortion served to fill many fan's desire for a new Run DMC recording.

DMC, being removed from his days at St. John's university, is set to contest his partner in crime and will even be featuring the Reverend on a few tracks of the King Of Rock's solo debut Checks, Thugs, & Rock -N- Roll.

Ray Mardo, under the artist name Natural Attraction, released the 15 country hit single "Get Stupid" on Radikal/Popular Records. These days the Austin Film Festival honored writer spends his time typing away screenplays and novels and internet marketing. Two of his websites are: http://www.raymardo.com [http://www.whoisthecoolestguyontheplanet.com]

The Steffen House - A Molasses Desugarization Effort That Couldn't Gain Traction

Whatever happened to the Steffen House, once a critical figure of beet sugar factories, mainly in Europe? A Steffen House was considered so essential to the economic achievement of a beet sugar factory that a chief player in the affair of building and operating beet sugar factories in the earliest days of the 20th Century, Henry Oxnard, said he would not accept a contract to erect a sugar factory unless it included a Steffen House.

A key measurement of a beet factory's routine then and now is the percent of sucrose in molasses. The advent of any sucrose in molasses is verify that sugar intended for the warehouse, refined up, instead, in molasses. In Oxnard's day, molasses was deemed a waste manufactured goods and as such was regularly poured into the rivers abutting a sugar factory. Typically, in a ordinary factory missing a Steffen House, or in this more present period, an ion-exchange process, beet molasses will consist of fifty percent sucrose, an unacceptable loss to those engaged in the management of a beet factory. Factory superintendents submit to the presence of sugar in molasses as "purity". High purities, then, imitate high sugar losses to molasses - the same as pouring cash down the drain.

Molasses production is commonly equal to five percent on beets processed, thus a factory run of 1,000,000 tons of beets could result in the production of 50,000 tons of molasses which would contain roughly 25,000 tons of sugar which would have a market regard of ten million dollars, assuming sugar is sold at $.20 per pound, net of manufacturing costs. It must go without adage that the prevention of the loss of sugar to molasses is a dominant challenge to beet factory managers. Since early, technology captured as much sugar as permitted by equipment then extant, the next curative was to take out sugar from molasses. That became the role of the Steffen House.

The Steffen administer was a mode for extracting sugar from molasses invented by Carl Steffen a Vienna born Austrian who patented the administer in 1883 while engaged in sugar manufacture in Moravia. While his mode has numerous variations, the administer in the end starts by diluting molasses with water (enough to start a key of 5-12% sucrose) and cooling it to a very low warmth (below 18 degrees C) after which finely minced lime (Calcium oxide) in sufficient quantity to establish a relationship of 130 percent to the sucrose content is continuously added with fight at a standardized and slow rate. The sugar in the molasses combines with the lime and a saccharage of lime is twisted which is unfathomable in the liquid. The saccharate was then separated and washed in a filter press. The cake from the filter press (saccharate of lime) was diverse with sweet water to a homogeny of cream and took the house of milk of lime in the carbonation process.

About ninety percent of the sugar formerly in the beet was extracted in those factories that employed the Steffen process. In some facilities, the waste water from the Steffen process, which was rich in fertilizing qualities (primarily potassium sulfate), was used for irrigating domain next-door the factory. The structure designed to accommodate the equipment employed in the Steffen administer became commonly referred to in the industry as the "Steffen's House".

The Steffen administer won instant popularity in Europe but establish less favor in the United States most likely in view of the fact that the administer was more refined in terms of its associated chemistry than any administer introduced into a beet factory up in anticipation of that time. The first such administer was installed in 1888 at Watsonville, California. It was a tiny pilot plant with three 5-foot coolers supplied by the Grevenbroich Machinery Company of Germany. Grevenbroich eventually supplied much of the equipment for three pioneer California factories, Watsonville, Los Alamitos, and Chino and nonstop to supply Oxnard's Steffen administer equipment in anticipation of his company and Kilby Manufacturing of Cleveland, Ohio, started producing improved models a few being later.

In the United States, the list of accomplished chemists who held lead positions in beet factories was slim. Often factory superintendents hewed to tried and right technology of the past, preferring methods learned from experience rather than scholarship. Guided by practical experience as a replacement for of theory, they would without malevolence reject thoughts and methods for which they lacked a basis for understanding. The Watsonville experimental Steffens administer was modest used, for example, in view of the fact that the factory director "did not believe in it."

The fundamental attraction of the Steffen administer lay in comparative advantage. Molasses was then an unwanted commodity and presented itself more as a waste issue than a salable product. Removing sugar from molasses was regarded as being paid excellent regard from a touch that would otherwise be discharged into the river, a practice that was from the earliest days of the U.S. beet industry frowned upon by those who relied upon rivers for additional industrial purposes, together with fishing. In time, molasses, which is in the end a sugar syrup that has been through the factory a digit of times and is by the administer of elimination frequently sugarbeet waste containing fifty percent sucrose, establish a variety of markets. Early on, it became a fund of ethyl alcohol but lost favor for many being in view of the fact that of the low cost of unknown crude oil. Interest in ethyl alcohol production would revive in the 1970's when crude oil prices rose. Molasses is also a principal raw material for the production of baker's proliferate and is a chief fund for the production of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and citric acid. However the volume demanded by those users was low compared to the quantity made available by the nation's beet sugar companies. The price of molasses was low as a consequence.

The 1970's saw attitudes about factory waste change from acceptance by the all-purpose public to a near total rejection of the premise that in view of the fact that of the excellent factories do (provide useful products and economic strength) their waste products must be tolerated. Thus the Steffens administer which bent liquid waste impression high alkalinity and pH as well as high organic content and consequent malodorous compounds became unwelcome. A Steffens House discharged waste water in amounts as fantastic as eight hundred percent of the volume of molasses processed.

Various studies indicated that it was doable to modernize the strength of the odors emanating from Steffen waste. The cost, however, to install and operate effective systems would offset the economic gains provided by the process. Thus factory managers who employed the Steffens administer started shutting them down and those who desired the repayment of such a process, looked elsewhere. In addendum to its shortcomings on the environmental front, the Steffens administer recovered only about 60% of the sugar in molasses. Sugar manufacturers started looking somewhere else for a key to the task of recovering sugar from molasses. Seeping into their thoughts was the thought that it would be better to dodge making molasses in the first place. They turned to ion exchange, a administer that would anticipate the making of molasses in the traditional sense.

Ion exchange, or deionization, is a mode of reducing impurities from juice which then allows for increased extraction of sugar. The attitude of ion chat has been known for more than 125 being but seldom used in the beet sugar industry in view of the fact that of its awkward habit of rising the sodium content of sugar juices which retards the ability of sugar to crystallize. However, later-day sugar manufacturers have turned to the practice of ion-exclusion chromatography which was first used fruitfully to produce high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). The administer is based on the exclusion of ionic compounds and the inclusion of nonionic compounds.

Molasses, then, once regarded as a thief who captured huge volumes of valuable sugar all through the sugar manufacturing administer had been made, at last, to give up its plunder via ion chat everywhere the sugar recovery rates get to ninety percent compared to sixty percent in the ancient Steffens House and without unenthusiastic environmental impact. And yet another bonus awaited sugar factories that turned to ion exchange.

Modern factories beginning in the 1990's started producing betaine from molasses, a valued food additive with bonus therapeutic benefits. The University of Maryland Medical Center noted in one of its studies that inexpensive wines that use beet sugar to boost the alcohol content, contain betaine. Some experts recommend that this may clarify why wine drinkers from France tend to have low rates of heart disease even with diets high in stout and cholesterol. More cogent, however, is the regard of betaine as a feed supplement for chickens and pigs. A digit of experiments show that the addendum of betaine to the feeds improves performance. Also, studies with pigs indicate an effect of betaine in energy metabolism and a astute boost in growth hormones. Humans, too, are result uses for betaine as a food supplement below a uncommon name, trimethylglycine or TMG.

Thus, the Steffen process, once the savior of sugar manufactures fell into disregard in view of the fact that of environmental and cost concerns but made way for the more efficient and environmentally friendly ion exchange.

Sources:

GREAT WESTERN SUGAR COMPANY, The Technology of Beet Sugar Manufacture, The Great Western Sugar Company, Denver, Colorado, June 30, 1920 - an instruction blue-collar prepared largely by D. J. Roach for use by the operating employees of the company's beet sugar factories.

GUTLEBEN, Dan, The Sugar Tramp-1954- Michigan, Printed by: Bay City Duplicating Co, San Francisco, 1954

McGINNIS, R.A. (Ed.) 1982, Beet Sugar Technology, Fort Collins, Colorado, Beet Sugar Development Foundation

©2010 Thomas Mahar All Rights Reserved.
About the Author:
Thomas Mahar served as Executive Vice President of Monitor Sugar Company between 1984 and 1999 and as President of Gala Food Processing, a sugar packaging company, from 1993-1998. He retired in 1999 and now devotes his free time to writing about the history of the sugar industry. A two-time winner of writing awards, he authored, Sweet Energy, The Story of Monitor Sugar Company in 2001 and maintains a blog at http://beetsugarhistory.blogspot.com/.
Contact: Thomas Mahar E-mail tkmahar@aol.com
Thomas Mahar served as Executive Vice President of Monitor Sugar Company between 1984 and 1999 and as President of Gala Food Processing, a sugar packaging company, from 1993-1998. He authored, Sweet Energy, The Story of Monitor Sugar Company in 2001, and Michigan's Beet Sugar History (Newsbeet, Fall, 2006) and is a two time winner of writing awards from the Southwestern Writers Conference for his work with historical novels set in the South and Southwest during the War Between the States era.
©2009 Thomas Mahar - all rights reserved