Ideas That Changed The Rum World: Sugarcane Processing, Water Evaporation
Category: Sugarcane Processing, Water Evaporation
In the 1800’s, the process used at plantations in New Orleans (and many other places) was known as the Sugar Train: the juice was pressed from the cane and poured into a large pan where it was heated. The water would evaporate away and the slaves working on the plantation would pour the thick residue into a succession of smaller pots for it to thicken. Aside from the sugar that was lost at each step or burned on the bottom of the pans, the process was dangerous for the slaves who had to handle the scalding liquid.
Idea: Multiple-Effect Evaporator
Norbert Rillieux was born in 1806 in New Orleans. He was the son of Vincent Rilleux (a wealthy plantation owner) and Constance Vivant, a “free person of colour”. Vivant was not herself a slave and her parentage is not known, but it is very likely that they were slaves. Norbert was a Creole of mixed race descent and was the first of eight children born to his parents.
Norbert was sent to France to be educated, as was common for the children of wealthy New Orleans parents at the time. While there, Norbert showed promise as a chemical engineer, and by the age of 24, he was an instructor in applied mechanics at L’Ecole Centrale in Paris. He became an authority on steam engines and turned his new knowledge to some of the manufacturing problems he had left behind him in Louisiana.
Norbert’s research attracted the attention of Edmund Forstall, who had been working to build
a new refinery along with one of his brothers. Forstall offered Norbert the position of head engineer at the new refinery, which was not yet built. Norbert returned to Louisiana in 1833 to work on the new refinery design, however, Forstall and the Rilleux family fell out over the project and the refinery was never built.
Undaunted, Norbert continued his research into the thermodynamics of sugar refining over the following nine years, and he patented his machine in 1843. His new ‘ triple effect’ method used a vacuum chamber to lower the boiling point of the liquid, and stacked the different pans of juice for more efficient heat transfer. Crucially, the entire operation was sealed off from the slaves, who would no longer have to handle the hot liquid, and losses due to spills and burning were greatly reduced.
His contribution to the sugar industry has since been recognized by the International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists, and the technology he pioneered is now used in everything from desalination of water to recycling on the International Space Station (Source: Royal Society of Chemistry).