CHAPTER VII 



SUGAR REFINING 



WE have seen how sugar production, whether cane or 

 beet, grew from small beginnings and primitive processes 

 into the great and highly scientific industry of to-day. 

 Sugar refining has also grown in the same way, but it 

 has also been so much modified from time to time, 

 and so much adapted to the varying requirements of 

 different classes of consumers, that its progress has not 

 been so definitely in the same direction as is the case 

 with cane or beet sugar production. 



Sixty years ago sugar refining here was much the 

 same as sugar refining in other countries. But very 

 soon the English and Scottish refiners began to use a 

 much lower raw material than their continental neigh- 

 bours, and this involved different methods and different 

 results. The essential characteristic of sugar refining, as 

 distinguished from the processes involved in producing 

 sugar from the juice of the cane or the beetroot, is the 

 use, in small or large quantities, of animal charcoal; 

 that is, charcoal made from bones, for decolorizing 

 sugar solutions. The foreign refiners deal with a very 

 high class of raw material, and, therefore, require only 

 a very small quantity of charcoal for filtering their 

 sugar solutions. In Paris, for instance, the greater 

 part of the raw material is white sugar and, consequently, 

 charcoal is only used in a very small way. In Russia 

 the refiners use nothing but white sugar, and make 

 nothing but loaf sugar, the only form in which sugar is 

 consumed in that country. The process of sugar 

 refining is, therefore, in that country mere child's play. 



80 



