144 THE BANANA 



American Evaporators. " Evaporators " are very largely 

 used in America for drying apples, peaches, grapes, sweet 

 corn, potatoes and other vegetables. There is a firebox 

 below, and above are movable shelves. A stream of hot 

 air passes through the shelves and out into a flue ; the 

 smoke from the fire is conducted through the flue, and 

 helps the draught. Spon * speaks of one kind of evaporator 

 as " a chamber running from the top of a large furnace in 

 the basement upward, out through the roof of a three - 

 story building. The current of heated air is kept as near 

 as possible to 240 F. (116 C.). The sliced apples are 

 spread on galvanized screens and placed in the evaporator. 

 The screens rest on endless chains that move upwards at 

 intervals of three to five minutes, when a fresh screen is 

 put in below, and one is taken off at the third story com- 

 pleted. . . . The process of evaporation is so rapid that 

 the fruit loses none of its freshness and flavour. ... In 

 properly evaporated fruit there is no loss of pleasant or 

 valuable properties, but an actual increase of fruit sugar, 

 from the fact that evaporation is essentially a ripening 

 process." 



Cocoa and Coffee Driers. There are machines on the 

 market for drying cocoa, coffee, &c., which might be 

 adapted for drying bananas for the purpose of making 

 banana chips for conversion into flour. In the ordinary 

 machine the bananas become conglomerated into large 

 masses, and the machinery would require some internal 

 arrangement of paddles to prevent this accumulation. 



Vacuum Driers. The Philippine Agricultural Review 

 says : " The trouble in the past has been that bananas and 

 plantains do not keep well unless dried by special processes 

 and do not endure long storage without losing some of 

 their flavour at least, if not some of their nutritious value. 

 The advent of the new vacuum driers changes the entire 

 commercial aspect of fEenbanana-products industry, and 

 we shall soon see a great variety of food products made 

 from the 200 or more banana varieties. There is enough 



* Tom. cit. 503. 



