Rillieux's sugar processing method
published: Thursday | February 5, 2004

THE EDITOR, Sir:

BLACK HISTORY month - Sugar processing. The sugar you put in your coffee or tea this morning was refined using a process devised by an African-American inventor, Norbert Rillieux. Born in New Orleans in 1806, Rillieux was the son of a slave mother, but his French planter father sent him to France to be educated, so he returned to New Orleans a trained engineer.

After witnessing the dangerous, expensive process by which sugar cane was then refined, he set out to devise a better system. Rillieux patented his process in 1846. This efficient process greatly accelerated the rate of sugar production in Louisiana and the West Indies, thus dramatically cutting the costs - and the price to the public. Rillieux's invention, called the Multiple Effect Vacuum Pan Evaporator, was also used in making gelatin and soap, and was such an improvement in manufacturing that it has been called the greatest invention in the history of American chemical engineering.

Before his invention, cane juice was slowly and laboriously boiled down in a series of kettles, transferred by ladles from one to another, until it crystallised in the final kettle. Ironically, Rillieux's creation of cheap sugar expanded the market and increased the need for more slaves to do the backbreaking work of cutting cane.

I am, etc.,

DANNY VASSELL

devasse747@yahoo.com

Miramar, Florida

Via Go-Jamaica