LALLOUETTE PRESS. 137 



settes in order to reheat them, while in other cases it has been 

 customary to reheat this residuum by bringing it in contact with 

 live steam. 



Maercker attempted to obtain the same result, not by heat 

 but by chemical reactions. After a long series of laboratory 

 investigations he concluded that when the cossettes were mixed 

 with lime or alkaline salts, the cellular tissues of the product 

 became very much more porous. The most efficacious method 

 is the least expensive. It consists in submitting the cossettes 

 to the action of 0.5 per cent, of lime, using it in the form of 

 milk of lime. The receptacle in which this mixing is done has a 

 suitably-arranged agitator which produces a perfectly homoge- 

 neous mass. This operation lasts from 20 to 30 minutes, and 

 the product thus obtained gives up a large percentage of water 

 under the slightest pressure. Some investigators who have 

 introduced this milk of lime treatment claim that the percent- 

 age of dry substances in the final pressed product reaches nearly 

 30 per cent. (?), that the limed cossettes were possessed of an 

 agreeable flavor, etc. 



Siekel also recommends this mode of working, but under no 

 circumstances should the residuum be allowed to be in contact 

 with the lime for more than 30 minutes, as otherwise the 

 physical condition of the product would be altered, and it 

 would then, in a measure, be worthless for the purposes 

 intended. It would be transformed in the presses into a com- 

 pact mass, which it would be impossible to compress without a 

 breaking of the press, and under such circumstances it would 

 become necessary to cut it into pieces in order to remove it. 



Muller proposes the washing of the cossettes in lime water 

 before pressing. Under this treatment the residuum increases 

 in value as a fodder, and the lime will constitute later on an 

 obstacle to the excessive fermentation in silos, which is always 

 to be dreaded. 



The theory of the Manoury method is based upon the 

 simultaneous action of heat and a suitable chemical, which 

 coagulates the albuminoids in the tissues of the beet. Its 

 application to diffusion consists in adding lime to fresh beet 

 cossettes during the diffusion at 70 C. , allowing the contact to 



