Refining

“ The cost of refining sugar varies in different parts of the United States on account of the difference in the cost of commodities entering into the refining process, such as labor, fuel, cotton, burlap, containers, bone-char, etc. ”

“ Finally, we need to expand and enhance our refining capacity. It has been 30 years since a new refinery was built in our Nation, and lawsuits and red tape have made it extremely costly to expand or modify existing refineries. ”

“ The chemical laboratory is really the heart of the institution, for upon it depends the success of every manufacturing operation. The superintendent of a refinery must possess a thorough knowledge of chemical engineering, for the process of sugar refining is largely chemical from beginning to end.
Competent chemical engineers, as distinguished from chemists, are rare, and yet their calling offers more promising prospects to young men than most other professions do today. ”

“ In process of time new modes of manufacture were adopted: the vacuum-pan in place of the open boiler, for condensing the liquor; the centrifugal tube in place of the old inverted cone, or leech-tub, for expelling the molasses; and animal charcoal, instead of clayey infiltration, for refining and whitening the result. The perfection of the refining process as now practised renders color in raw sugars a matter of little consequence, provided they contain abundance of saccharine matter. The color standard has come to be a precarious one. ”

“ With wondrous speed and unfailing certainty it conveys crude-oil from the wells to the refineries in or out of the region, climbing hills, descending ravines, fathoming rivers and traversing plains and forests. Methods of refining have kept pace with progress in transportation. The smoky, dangerous, inconvenient kettle-still of the pioneer on Oil Creek has given place to the mammoth refinery of to-day, with its labor-saving appliances, its hundreds of skilled employés and 332its improved processes. ”

“ Among his inventions was an improved method of refining gold and silver and of collecting the smaller particles of them, formerly lost in the processes of the local manufacturers. Stimulated by his successes, he established in Steelhouse Lane a large laboratory, and in connection with it a refinery of the precious metals. ”

“ The process of refining the crude oil obtained from the shale into the various products is somewhat complicated and perplexing to those unassociated with the industry on account of the many distillations and treatments which have to be carried out before a good marketable article is produced. ”

“ The business of refining is generally in the hands of others than the producers; but some of the larger firms—notably the Rothschilds, Nobel Brothers, and Taghioff—are both producers and refiners. This means of course, the employment of very, much larger capital. ”

“ About thirty years ago the method of refining lard with fullers earth was first inaugurated, and for years only imported earth from England was thought suitable for this purpose. Deposits of fullers earth, of fair quality, have been discovered in the United States and American fullers earth is today used in some lard refineries. Indications are that with improvements in mining and methods of grinding, and possibly also in the discovery of better beds or layers of this substance, manufacturers will not continue to go abroad for supplies of fullers earth. ”

“ The refining operation takes 5 or 6 hours; namely, an hour to fill the basin, three hours to boil the tin with the green wood, and from one to two hours for the subsidence.
Sometimes a simpler operation, called tossing, is substituted for the above artificial ebullition. To effect it, a workman lifts some tin in a ladle, and lets it fall back into the boiler, from a considerable height, so as to agitate the whole mass. He continues this manipulation for a certain time; after which, he skims with care the surface of the bath. The tin is afterwards poured into moulds, unless it be still impure. ”

“ When the tin begins to cool, and when a more complete separation of its different qualities cannot be looked for, it is lifted out in ladles, and poured into cast-iron moulds. It is obvious, that the order in which the successive blocks are obtained, is that of their purity; those formed from the bottom of the basin being usually so impure, that they must be subjected anew to the refining process, as if they had been directly smelted from the ore. ”

“ All these factors and perhaps others combine to make the refining stage of the industry a specialized manufacturing one to be carried on separately from growing, to establish the refiners' key place in the entire industry, and thus to leave the growers completely at the refiners' mercy for the profitable production of beets except as the latter may compete among themselves.↑ See note 20.↑ It is suggested that Parker v. ”

“ A sugar refinery is operated the entire twelve months of the year, while a raw-sugar mill must of necessity take care of the crop of cane in about eight months. To refine sugar where it is grown would require refining machinery capable of handling the entire output in the eight-month period, and during the remaining four months the plant would remain idle. This would mean a larger investment proportionately than that made in a refinery in a consuming center, running steadily the year round. ”

“ I shall erect a twenty-cord plant between Enterprise and Guildford, within wagon distance of the wood-supply of the estate. Recollect that this process uses only the fallen trees and stumps of the long-leafed pine, which are reduced to a sawdust, and this is then put into the retorts. Steam is then injected, which tries out the turpentine, which is then run into the refining still.
"I can arouse no interest whatever among my relatives. They simply think I am crazy. ”

“ Set any one to talk about himself, instead of about other people, and you will have a seam of the precious mental metal opened up to you at once; only ore, most likely, that needs much smelting and refining; or it may be, not gold at all, but a metal which your mental alchemy may turn into gold. ”

“ Q. What are the refiners that are now in association of the Standard Oil?
A. The people that are working in harmony with us comprise about, I should think, 90 or 95 per cent. of the refiners.
Q. Now tell us their names, the leading ones.
A. Some of the leading ones? The Standard Oil Company; Charles Pratt and Company; the Sone and Fleming Manufacturing Company; Warden, Frew and Company of Philadelphia; the Standard Oil Company of Pittsburg; the Acme Oil Refining Company of Titusville; the Imperial Refining Company of Oil City; the Baltimore United Oil Company of Baltimore. ”

“ Below, there is a refinery. It is for the establishment alone; but, just like that we have already described—only on a smaller scale. First, the rolling-mill shows us its powers by a speedy experiment;—it flattens a halfpenny, making it oblong at the first turn, and, by degrees, with the help of some annealing in the furnace, drawing it out into a long ribbon of shining copper, which is rolled up, tied with a wire, and presented to us as a curiosity. Next, we see coils of thick round wire, of a dirty white, which we can hardly believe to be gold. ”

“ The refiner is essentially a finishing process as an adjunct to the beating process proper. The advantages to be derived from its use are a considerable saving in the time occupied in beating and the production of a more uniform and evenly divided pulp, particularly where a mixture of different fibres is used. By the use of the refiner the time occupied in the beater can be reduced by nearly one-half, the half-beaten pulp passing through the refiner from the beater on its way to the paper-machine. ”

“ A few years ago all sugar went out in barrels or bags, while today a modern refinery turns out about twenty different styles of container, and twenty-four kinds of sugar. It is obvious, therefore, that the packing room of a refinery is an interesting place, covering as it does a large area and including a great amount of special, intricate machinery for filling, weighing and sewing or sealing packages. ”

“ He can suffer heavily his own mistakes, learn from them, cor-rect them. He can fight opposition, bear all—so long as the work is his. There were refiners in 1875 who loved their business in this way. Why one should love an oil refinery the outsider may not see; but to the man who had begun with one still and had seen it grow by his own energy and intelligence to ten, who now sold 500 barrels a day where he once sold five, the refinery was the dearest spot on earth save his home. ”

“ Instead of the blood, many refiners employ a mixture of gelatinous alumina and gypsum, called finings, prepared by adding a solution of alum to a body of lime-water, collecting, washing, and draining the precipitate upon a filter. Other refiners use both the blood and finings, with advantage. Bone black is now very frequently employed by the sugar-refiner, not in a fine meal, but in a granular state, like corned gunpowder, for the purpose of decolouring his syrups ”

“ You must always think of Mining, with every bushel of corn you measure out, and when you are out in the spring, in a stiff east wind, with a dozen laborers, and the old loam-dust flies in your nose, and sticks there, as if a swallow had built her nest in your head, and the sun looks out through the dust, as round and red as a copper-kettle, then you must think that is Mining's face, looking down on you. ”

“ The expression carries in it a plain allusion to the refiner's art, in which the fire separates and distinguishes the dross from the gold and silver; as it also will silver and gold and precious stones, that will endure the fire, from wood and hay and stubble, that will be consumed in it. Note, There is a day coming that will as nicely distinguish one man from another, and one man's work from another's, as the fire distinguishes gold from dross, or metal that will bear the fire from other materials that will be consumed in it. ”

“ At one time, the refiner had to consider the saleability of his refined products before he commenced to refine them, but to-day, with the perfect system which prevails for the handling of huge quantities of refined products, and the transporting of them to the most distant markets, the one desire of the refiner is, naturally, to secure from his treatment of the crude oil, as many refined products as possible, always keeping an eye on the production of the largest quantities of the higher priced products than upon those which are of low value. ”

“ The primitive miner, when he had got his ore with the aid of his simple tools, a wooden shovel and a pick, also in earliest times of wood, but later of iron, constructed a rough hearth of stones on which he kindled a fire. When it was burning strongly he cast in his ore and afterwards collected the molten tin from the ashes. The next stage was to construct a regular furnace, exactly similar in type to the boles or furnaces used for lead-melting (see above, p. 51) . ”

“ Employment of materials of little value. The skins used by the goldbeater are produced from the offal of animals. The hoofs of horses and cattle, and other horny refuse, are employed in the production of the prussiate of potash, that beautiful, yellow, crystallized salt, which is exhibited in the shops of some of our chemists. The worn-out saucepans and tinware of our kitchens, when beyond the reach of the tinker's art, are not utterly worthless. We sometimes meet carts loaded with old tin kettles and worn-out iron coal-skuttles traversing our streets. ”

“ The ingredients for the manufacture being close together would greatly facilitate the treatment of the ore. This is the cause of the wealth of the mines in Great Britain, where the coal aids the manufacture of the metal extracted from the same soil at the same time as itself.
"Then, captain," said Pencroft, "we are going to work iron ore?"
"Yes, my friend," replied the engineer, " and for that something which will please you—we must begin by having a seal hunt on the islet."
"A seal hunt!" cried the sailor, turning towards Gideon Spilett. "Are seals needed to make iron?" ”

“ The refinery proper is the largest building in the Western country used for manufacturing purposes, and, together with its adjuncts of cooper-shops and warehouses, covers five entire blocks and employs 500 men. It has a capacity of working up 400 tons of raw sugar a day, but runs only to the extent of about 200 tons a day, making the value of its present product $7,500,000 a year. ”

“ I compare such preachers to a miner, who should go to the quarry where he raised the ore, and taking his sledge in his hand, should endeavor to form bars of iron of the ore in its rough state, without a furnace to melt it, or a rolling-mill to roll it out, or molds to cast the metal, and conform the casts to their patterns. ”

“ That it is corn and sweet pease you are producing,—not gunpowder and arsenic. And be sure of this, literally:—you must simply rather die than make any destroying mechanism or compound. You are to be literally employed in cultivating the ground, or making useful things, and carrying them where they are wanted. Stand in the streets, and say to all who pass by: Have you any vineyard we can work in,—not Naboth’s? In your powder and petroleum manufactory, we work no more. ”

“ The refiners of sugar and coal oil, the makers of matches, lead-pencils, screws,—in short, almost all other interests,—have some sort of combination. The brewers stand by each other in fixing the price of beer, and if a saloon keeper fails to pay one brewer, the others will not furnish him with the product of their vats. ”