USRE5841E - Improvement in processes for manufacturing flour - Google Patents

Description

w. r. COCHBANE'. Proqsses for Manufacturing Flour.

No.5,84l.

Reissued April 21,1874.

I v nvenz'or UNITED STATES PATENT Orrron WILLIAM F. OOOHRANE, OF LA FAYETTE, IND., ASSIGNOR, BY MESNE ASSIGN- MENTS, TO HIMSELF, BENJAMIN H. WABDER, AN D RODNEY MASON.

IMPROVEMENT |N PROCESSES FOR MANUFACTURING FLOUR.

Specificatiouforming part of Letters Patent No. 37,317, dated-January 6, 1863;

reissue No. 5,841, dated April 21, 1874; application filed March 4,1874.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, WILLIAM F. Ooounnun, of La Fayette, in the county of Tippecanoe and State of Indiana, formerly of Springfield, in the county of Clarke and State of Ohio,

have invented a new and useful Improvement in the Art of Manufacturing Flour, of which the following is a specification:

In manufacturing flour, as heretofore practiced, the meal, after being ground, has generally been conveyed to a cooler, from which, after it had given up a portion of the heat it had acquired in grinding, itwas spouted into the head of a'reel clothed withwire or silk.

became impoverished of the heavy particles of flour, until, by the time-that it reached a point rarely, if ever, farther than the middle of the first reel, the impoverishment was so complete that the lighter impurities began to pass in such quantities as to reduce the grade of the flour below the standard At this point the flour passing through was cut off, and what passed through the remainder of ,the first and the whole of the second reel (where a second reel was used) was called returns, and was carried back either to the hopper-boy and mingled with the fresh meal, or spouted in with the latter into the head of the first reel. Byf'this mode of operation,-it, is manifest that the meal under treatment in the bolts at any 'given time after the introductiouof the returns contained more than its natural quantity of impurities, so that the system of returns, while it increased the yield, reduced the merchantable quality of the flour, as there would necessarily be more speck in flour thus made than in flour made from the freshly-ground meal in its natural condition as it came from flour. As, however,

the stones. As the process of impoverishment continued, the material passing through the bolt would become so impure as to be unfit for returns, and at this point anothercloth of coarser meshes was introduced, in passing the meal over which the portion of the meal called middlings was separated. These middlings consisted of the coarser particles of the flourproducing part of the berry not ground fine enough to pass through the meshes of the finer bolting-cloth with the superfine flour, mixed with a large proportion of pulverulent impurities, resulting from pulverizin g portions of the hull of the berry. When the middlings had been taken ofi', the meal passed onto a still coarsercloth, which separated the ships or ship-stuff. Then another still coarser cloth separated the shorts, and the bran passed ofl' at the tail of the reel. The middlings, ships, shorts, and bran were generally disposed of as feed. In some mills the mid dlings were disposed of for purposes of distih latiou, and in a comparatively few mills the .middlings were reground, and either sold as'a very inferior grade of flour, or part of the middlings-flour was mixed with the superfine flour in such proportions as could be done without reducing the total product below the standard.

Many plans had been suggested for improving the quality of flour, and among them the use of currents of air, to be admitted into the-interior ofthe reel through hollow perforated shafts; but, in all the various modes of milling, the end sought for was to keep back the speck, and make the largest possible amount of superfine flour, after which the separations of the ofl'al were immediately made without attempting its purification. 'After the middlings were reground, the middlings-meal was bolted, to improve, if possible, the quality of the middlings the portion of the hull which formed the'speck and dust is very brittle, and by the first grinding made as fine as the flour itself, and capable of passing through the meshes of any cloth through which the flour could be bolted, by regrinding it was only made still finer, and therefore thddifliculty of separating it from the valuable portions of the middliugs-meal increased.

Another and entirely distinct mode of mill-- ing was known as high milling. In this mode the grain, when first passed between the stones, was not ground into meal, butmerely broken,so that the kernel should be separated from thehull. Separation was then made bymeansof blasts of .air and sieves, and the coarser particles were again and again passed between the" stones, and subjected to the action of the sieves and blast until the hard flourproducing portions of the berry could be separated from the hull and then ground into flour.

My invention relates only to the ordinary mode of milling, in which the wheat isreduced to meal by grinding at the beginning of the operation, and then the superfine flour is next separated from the meal. I include under the general term i superfine flour the flour separated from the meal before the returns are taken out of the meal. Grades of fiour'were known under the name of extra or fancy but prior to the time of my in vention these higher grades werev made generally by the use of the highest quality of wheat, or by taking-off a small portion of. the

superfine flour which first passed at the head of the reel, and was, therefore, freest from speck and other impurities. The object of my invention was to increase the production of the best quality of flour; and my improvement consisted in separating from themeal first the superfine flour, and then thepulverulent impurities mingled with the flour-production portions of the middlings-meal, so as to make white or purified middlings, which, when reground and rebolted, would yield pure white flour, which, when added to the superfine, would improve the quality of the flour resulting from their union, instead of deteriorating its quality, as had theretofore been the :case when the middlings-flour was mingled with the superfine.

Y I have shown in the accompanying drawings, and in Letters Patent *of the United States issued January 6, 1863, and numbered 37,318, 37 ,319, 37 ,320,and-37,321, an improved plan of bolting-chests, incorporating means necessary for carrying into operation my improvement in the artof manufacturing flour. Machines constructed as set forth in said Letters Patent are well adapted to work my improvements in the art of manufacturing flour, but, being made the subjects of said patents, are notdesigned to be covered by this patent,

' which relates to the improved mode of manufacture, and is not limited to any special arrangement of machinery by which my improved process may be operated. As my pro cess is worked, in said machine, the wheat, having first been ground in the ordinary manher, is introduced into theehead of the first of a series of bolting-reels, clothed with cloths of progressively-finer meshes, and having introdueed into their interior blasts of air, carried it through hollow shafts, and discharged through pipes perforated with small holes, and so disposed that the force of the blastshall caused to act close to the surface of the boltingrcloth. The succession of finer cloths tends to delay the escape of the finerand lighter particles until the specifically heavier particles have passed through, constitituting the superfine flour. The-extent of the series of fine cloths 'is such that in said machines, after the superfine flour hasbeen taken out, th ere being no longer enough remaining to keep other equally fine but specifically lighter particles away from the cloth, they will, heforethe meal has reached the tail of the last reel-in the series, also pass through its meshes. Instead of returning this impure pulveruleut material (as in ordinary modes of manufacture) to the head of the first reel, to be mingled with the freshly- -ground meal, provision is made in mysaid machines .for carrying it away and storing it separately.

Another agency is at the same time made to assist in the operation of separatingthe pulverulent impurities from the flour producing portiolis of the meal, and thus made tocon-tribute .to the accomplishment of my .improvedmode of manufacture. There is continually a bed of meal in the bottom of the reels, which is in constant agitation as it is lifted up and falls back with the revolution of the reels. As the airpipes come in succession to their, lowest posi-v tion, they will direct their jets against this mass, and through the falling particles carried up by and falling back from therevolving cloth-.

These jets, acting on the mass of meal, will separate the specifically lighter particles, and hold them in suspensiomcarryingaway more or less g of the finer and lighter particlesthrough the meshes of the cloth, withthe currents whichv are constantly ascending and passing out' at the top of the bolting'chest, which is open, while the floor and sides of each reehconipartment are made close. -When the residue of the meal is delivered at the tail of the last reel in the series, itis then carried into a separatorreel, clothed in the ordinary manner with-cloths of increasing coarseness, and separaqed into lniddlings, ships,-shor ts, and bran. As all thesedivisions are to some extent arbitary.

and only approximate,-some of the finest of the'ship-stuff will be mingled with the white middlings,but the character of the middlings will be found todifferfrom the brown middlings produced by former modes of manufacture, these being white middlings mingled with particles of the coarser ofi'al, having been puri-. fled by the separation of the finer pulverulent particles inthe treatment of themeal in' the first series of reels.

It is this intermediate treatment (between the separation of the superfine flour and the completion of the middling's-flour byregrinding and rebolting) for the separation and'removal of the pulverulent impurities, which distinguishes my improvement in the art from all beforeknown modes of manufacture.

The-white or purified middlings thus obtained are then reground and rebolted through a series of reels, in all respects like the first-dc-x scribed ones, in the following manner At the tail of the first reel of this series the oflal is drawn oil, and the middlings-flour which has passed through the meshes of the first reel, is mingled with a suitable amount of coarse ofl'al from the separator and passed through the second and third reels, which are clothed with finer and finer cloths. .The finished middlings-fiour is here separated, and the remaining oflal passing but at the tail of the last reel, is returned to the separator, and the middlings-flour run into a chest by itself, to be either sold separately or mingled with the superfine flour; The offal delivered at the tail of the first middlings-reel, made up of the impurities of the white middlings as they come from the separator, is finished ofi'al and spouted away to the feed-pile. The coarse ofi'al mingled with the middlingsflour, as produced on the first hiiddlings-reel, is added for the purpose of lightening it up, as without theaddition of such offal it would not bolt properly.

By this means Ilproduce middlings-flournot the dark impure flour heretofore known as middlings-fiour, but a flour which may be mingled with the superfine flour first taken out or sold separatel What I claim as my invention, and desire to v secure by Letters Patent, as an improvement in the art of manufacturing flour, is-

The hereinbefore-described process for manufacturingflourfrom the meal of ground wheat, by first taking out the superfineflour, and then taking out the pulverulent impurities by subjection to the coinbined operations of screening and blowing and afterward regrinding and 'reboltiug the purified middlings.

' In testimony that I claim the foregoing I have hereunto set my hand this December, 1873.

' WM. F. OOOHRANE. Witnesses: I

R. Mason, Tnos. 0. Comment.

26th day of

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