Molasses, beet fermentation residue

The vinasse of sugar beet.—Sugar beet contains about 0 5 per cent, of potash, K20, largely in combination with organic acids. The potash accumulates in the molasses of the best sugar factories. The molasses are fermented and distilled for alcohol. The residue which remains in the retort—called vinasse—may be used as a manure, or it may be mixed with lime and ignited to form what was once called vinasse cinder, and used in the manufacture of soft-soap. It is, however, more profitably refined for potash by fractional crystallization.6 The product has approximately the composition ... 

From Beet Sugar Residues.— Another source for the manufacture of methyl alcohol is the residue from beet sugar manufacture known as vinasse. When beet sugar is refined the molasses from which all possible sugar has been crystallized is allowed to ferment and the liquid then distilled. The residue left from this distillation is then dry distilled and methyl alcohol is obtained just as from wood. 

All three of the methyl amines are found naturally in herring brine, and in the dry distillation products of the residues obtained from fermented beet sugar molasses after it has been evaporated to drive off the alcohol and water. They also occur in certain plants and as the decomposition products of more complex nitrogenous organic substances such as morphine. 

Propyl hydroxid—Ethyl carbinol—Primary propyl alcohol— CH3,CH2,CH,0H—60—is produced, along with ethylic alcohol,dur-ing fermentation, and obtained by fractional distillation of marc brandy, from cognac oil, huile de marc (not to be confounded with oil of wine), an oily matter, possessing the flavor of inferior brandy, which separates from marc brandy, distilled at high temperatures and from the residues of manufacture of alcohol from beet-root, grain, molasses, etc. It is a colorless liquid, has a hot alcoholic taste, and a fruity odor boils at 96°.7 (306°.l F.) and is miscible with -water. It has not been put to any use in the arts. Its intoxicating and poisonous actions are greater than those of ethyl alcohol. It exists in small quantity in cider. 

Prior to World War II cane residues from U.S. alcohol fermentation were incinerated to make potash for fertilizer use. Both during and after World War II, millions of pounds of dry and also condensed molasses fermentation products were profitably sold for speciality industrial use outside of the feed industry. These markets have been neglected and could readily be established again on an economic basis to reduce overall ethanol production costs from cane or beet molasses. 

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