4 BULLETIN 904, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



In most hominy mills the hominy products are the principal 

 ones, while the feed, flour, meal, and oil are minor or by-products. 

 Until recently the principal consumers of hominy products were the 

 brewers, who used flakes and large quantities of grits of various sizes. 

 These flakes are made from coarse hominy (pearl hominy), which is 

 steamed, rolled, and dried. They are white and differ from the ordinary 

 breakf ast flakes mainly in the fact that they are not toasted. In the 

 ordinary milling practice about 5 per cent of the corn kernel is made 

 into flour. This amount develops incidentally during the process, 

 owing to the breaking up in the various machines of the starchy and 

 brittle portions of the kernel. Whenever the market demands war- 

 rant, however, the production of flour can be increased by reducing 



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Fig. 3. — Diagram showing the various steps in the process of the manufacture of products from corn 



in a glucose plant. 



more of the grits. During the war the demand for wheat-flour sub- 

 stitutes resulted in a greatly increased production of corn flour and 

 meal. 



WET PROCESS. 



In starch and glucose plants the corn is degerminated by the wet 

 process. The cleaned corn is placed in large circular wooden vats, 

 which are filled about two-thirds full, where it is steeped or soaked 

 in water containing 0.2 per cent of sulphurous acid. This acid is 

 usually prepared by burning sulphur and passing the fumes of sulphur 

 dioxid through coke towers in the presence of a spray of water. In 

 some plants there is an arrangement to draw off the corn gradually 

 at the bottom and to put in fresh corn at the top of the vat'. The 

 time required to prepare the corn properly for degerminating varies 

 from 36 to 40 hours ; hence in the automatic arrangement that much 



