Vol. XIII. Xo. 314. 



THE AGRICULTURAL XEWS. 



HI 



a variety known as 'Dacca Clandari' have recently been 

 received at this Ottice in good condition and forwarded to 

 Antigua where their germination capacities will be tested. 

 It is interesting to add that this Indian cane is descrilied as 

 a very free tillerer, good cropper, and of high quality. 



AN ELECTRICALLY DRIVEN CANE MILL. 



Within a short distance of Havana, the Kelvin 

 Engineering Company have installed at Ingenio 

 Amistad, an electrical appliance for operating an 

 eighteen roller sugar-cane mill. The plant is described 

 in the Louisiana Planter (March 21, 1914-), from 

 which source the following information has been 

 taken: — 



The shape of the factory building is nearly square. 

 The old mills are located along one side, each one directly 

 in front of the other, and to accommodate the two new 

 mills an extension was built out from one end so that all are 

 in a continuous line. There are no cross carriers except 

 those for taking the bagasse to the boilers. These are located 

 behind the milling plants and partly in an ell which projects 

 from the opposite end of the building at right angles to the 

 mill house. 



The boiler machinery, crystallizers and centrifugals are in 

 the centre of the factory; the refinery in the corner diagonally 

 opposite from the mills; the filter presses are diagonally 

 across from the boilers; and the electric generating plant 

 is between the miter presses and the mills on two sides, 

 and between the efJects and the front of the building on the 

 other two. 



This plant consists of three Westinghouse generators 

 directly driven by Parsons turbines, each one rated at 1,000 

 K.V.A. and supplying a three phase current at 440 volts. 

 Onlj' two of these generators are needed for the operation of 

 the factory, the third simply being held in reserve. The 

 generators together with the e.xciters, switchboards and other 

 incidental machinery, are mounted on a huge concrete base 

 or platform, from which a view of the greater part of the 

 factory may be had. The turbines take steam at a pressure 

 of lOO R). and exhaust against a back pressure of SBb., this 

 exhaust vapour being employed as usual in the boiling of the 

 multiple effects and pans. 



The first six motors for driving the mills (a separate 

 motor for each mill and the crusher) are of the induction type, 

 43.5 R.P.M., rated at 200 H.P., and operate at 440 volts. 

 The seventh motor, which drives the last mill, is rated at 2-50 

 U V. The principal reason for making all the first six motors 

 of the same size, though they are driving a crusher and mills 

 of ditt'erent size?, was to allow ample power for any emergency 

 and also to cut down the stock of spare parts that must be 

 carried. 



Each motor is set alongside the bedplate of the steam 

 engine that formerly drove the mill, and imparts motion to 

 the old engine shaft by means of a herring-bone pinion and 

 gear, which gives a reduction of 10 to 1, thus driving the 

 main pinion of the mill gearing at about 40 R. P. M. In 

 connexion with each motor car is a speed regulator, which 

 allows a reduction from the maximum of 20 per cent. We 

 did not see these regulators used, as the mills were working 

 very smoothly, but we were told that by slowing down the 

 mills and then speeding them up again, It is easy to make 

 them take a chunk of bagasse that would ordinarily give 

 trouble. 



The claims made for electric installations in general are 

 the elimination of the immense amount of radiating surface 

 in the labyrinth of steam pipes that fill so many houses, and 

 the consequent saving of a very considerable quantity of 

 heat; the .saving of transmission losses in belting by directly 

 driving such machines as centrifugals, etc.; elimination of 

 leaky joints in steam pipes that help to keep the floors and 

 platforms wet and dirty; ease and cheapness of the annual 

 overhauling of the motors, generators and power pumps; 

 increased space and simplicity inside the factory due to the 

 absence of steam pii'ing; economy of heat in replacing small 

 direct acting steam pumps by those driven electrically — 

 these and many others. 



THE MANUFACTURE OF 'HABITANT' 



RUM IN GUADELOUPE. 



From the earliest colonial days until the establishment 

 of the first sugar central in 1^62, rum and sugar were 

 manufactured in Guadeloupe by each plantation owner upon 

 his premises, but as the number of centrals increased, the 

 planter found home manufacture attended with such expendi- 

 ture that he could not compete with the sugar centrals or 

 factories. Upon the fiat, low lying island of Grande Terre, 

 where large areas of cane lands are in close proximity, most 

 of the sugar centrals have been erected, and planters in the 

 neighbourhood of these have found it more to their advantage 

 to grow sugarcane and sell it to the centrals than to manu- 

 facture sugar themselves. Upon the Island of Guideloupe 

 proper, with its abrupt slopes, great valleys and hills, and 

 such small areas of level lands, widely separated, the locatioit 

 of centrals near sufficient quantities of cane was difficult, 

 the centrals are few in number and small in output. 

 Many of the planters, however, unable to sell their cane or tc 

 compete in the manufacture, undertook the manufacture of 

 a rum known to the Colonials as rhum, or 'habitant' rum, 

 made from the pure juice of the crushed cine. This was very 

 profitable at first, but in a short time the centrals began the 

 manufacture of 'tafia', a rum made from the 'melasse' 

 left after the sugar had been extracted from the cane juice. 

 This rum, because of the cheaper cost of production, under- 

 sold the rum of the small distiller, and commanded the 

 market both at home and abroad. To relieve the small 

 distiller, the Colonial Government, in December 1888, 

 passed a law which provided that rum made on a plantation 

 from pure cane juice, obtained from cane grown and 

 harvested thereon, should receive a rebate of 30 per cent. 

 of the excise tax if consumed within the colony. This 

 rebate, costing the colony in nine years £113,000, made 

 such inroads in the Colonial revenues, that, through the 

 efforts of the Government, an agreement, which still obtains, 

 was made between the centrals and the small distillers, by 

 which all rum made by the former was to be exported, 

 while the rum made by the latter was to be sold primarily 

 for local consumption, and only the excess exported. The 

 law of December 1888 was repealed in 1898, and only 

 'habitant' rum is consumed in the colony. Of a total of 

 2,788,000 gallons of rum exported in 1911, 2,628,000 

 gallons were made and exported by the centrals, and 

 160,000 gallons by the small distillers. [Jcvrval of tkn 

 Royal Society of Arts, for April 3, 1914.) 



