Norbert Rillieux
By
John C Abercrombie
Norbert Rillieux is associated with the refining of sugar as we know it today. His product is used in a wide variety of our food today. He is one of the first Chemical Engineers and well respected for his work.
Rillieux was born into a prominent Creole family in New Orleans, Louisiana. Creole is a mixture of European and African ancestry. Norbert was the son of Vincent Rillieux a White plantation owner and Constance Vivant a free person of color. Norbert was the oldest of 7 children. Several members of the family are well known.
His aunt on his father’s side was the mother of Bernard Soulie. The Soulie family is one studied by Tara A Dudley and featured in the upcoming book. “Building Antebellum New Orleans” Dudley examines the architectural activities and influence of “gens de couleur libres” or Free People of Color, looking at the mixed race descendants who could own property. More on this in a future post. The Soulie’s were a wealthy family and associated with the Evergreen Plantation project that focuses on Creole history.
Rillieux was also related to the painter Edgar Degas, a French impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.
Norbert Rillieux was also related to the blind Creole songwriter, poet and playwright and businessman Victor Earnest Rillieux known for writing poems about contemporary civil rights activists including Ida B Wells (covered in a separate post) and Black civil rights advocate P G T Beauregard.
Because of his father, Rillieux had access to education and privileges that were not available to slaves or free Blacks. Baptized Roman Catholic he was educated in private Catholic schools in Louisiana before going to Paris to study at École Centrale Parris, one of the top engineering schools in France. He studied physics, mechanics and engineering becoming an expert in steam engines. He published several papers on the use of steam in work devices. He became the youngest teacher at École Centrale at the age of 24 teaching applied mechanics.
Sugar has always been a valuable commodity made profitable with free labor supplied by slaves. Much of the sugar was produced in the Caribbean but it was a costly process. The most commonly process was called the Sugar Train, also known as the Spanish or Jamaican Train. Sugarcane juice was pressed from cane and put into a large kettle, heated and left until most of the water was driven off. The slave workers then had to put the hot sticky fluid into smaller and smaller pots as it thickened.
There were losses in the process as some was lost in the pouring process and other was unpalatable as it burned due to lack of adequate temperature control. It was also dangerous as slaves were exposed to burn hazards as they carried and poured the sticky fluid which could cause severe burns. Anyone burned by hot candy or oil has an idea of the hazard.
At this time, Norbert was in France and his research included sugar refining. At the same time relatives in Louisiana were in the process of building a sugar refinery and offered Norbert the job as head. He returned but others in the family his father Vincent, Cousin Edmond Rillieux and Edmund Forstall could not come to agreement and the project stalled and was never finished.
Norbert continued to focus on his work and patented the multiple-effect evaporation system in 1843. This patent solved 2 major problems in the processing of sugar. It eliminated the spillage and improved the quality of the product by the even application of heat that ruined so much produced by the current methods. The system used a vacuum chamber with reduced air flow to lower the boiling point. The heat was more easily and uniformly controlled than before.
His great scientific achievement has been recognized as the reason for better quality and lower cost in the manufacture of sugar. It is recognized as a great innovation in chemical engineering for lowering the temperature of all industrial evaporation and saving large quantities of fuel and costs.
Rillieux successfully installed the new system several years later at Myrtle Grove plantation and continued to install them for many years. He had installed 13 systems in Louisiana when in 1849 Merrick and Towne a Philadelphia firm began offering 3 models of the system capable of producing 6,000, 12,000 or 18,000 pounds of high quality sugar per day using Rillieux’s system.
Often, we miss the devastation of race on everyday life. In the 1850’s there were devastating outbreaks of yellow fever. Rillieux proposed a system that would eliminate the moist breeding grounds for mosquitoes that carried the disease and addressing problems in the city’s sewer system. The plan was shot down by Edmund Forstall. Remember him as one of the dissenters in the sugar refining business that brought Norbert back to Louisiana? He was now a state legislator and blocked the plan. It was a very workable plan ad several years later with yellow fever still devastating the area, the problem was solved with an almost identical plan to that proposed by Rillieux earlier.
The effects of racial discrimination run deep. Benjamin Bellechase who would later become the secretary of war for the Confederacy became one of Rillieux’s staunchest supporters. Often when Rillieux was installing the systems, he was required to stay in slave quarters although he should have been esteemed and treated with better respect for his abilities.
It is suspected that racial conditions like described above and an having an application for a patent rejected because an authority falsely believed that Rillieux was a slave and not a citizen of the United States caused him to make the decision to return to France.
The above circumstances demonstrate that no amount of contribution, no amount of attempting to be a good citizen, seeking the opportunity for equal treatment in school, work or just living has been extended to people of color, yet many persist in thinking that the opportunity was there. This should be an eye opening experience.
In this case we see that no matter how hard a Black worked, no matter the contribution to society, no matter the circumstances, no Black could escape the racism of this country. It has moderated somewhat but continues.
When Rillieux returned to France, he became interested in Egyptology (the study of Egypt and all of its contributions to the world). Egypt is located in the Northeast corner of the continent of Africa and the early Greeks acknowledge that they got their education in Africa. Rillieux was interested in hieroglyphics. He spent the next decade working on the Bibliothèque Nationale.
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African American Inventor | Norbert Rullieux – Sugar (Part 1)
African American inventor, Norbert Rullieux was born in New Orleans on March 17, 1806. He was 24 years old when he became a teacher and an expert in steam engines. Along with his apparatus where multiple new inventions which were not patented by the inventor such as the watch glass, the catchall tray, and many others. His invention made it possible to produce sugar from any liquids containing sugar such as saccharine juice and syrup. Norbert died in France on October 08, 1894.
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Candy and Chocolate
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Did You Know? –
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We see in the life of Norbert Rillieux what a person can achieve if just given the opportunity. Because his father was able and did provide him with excellent educational opportunities, he was able to achieve. Many were not willing to over opportunities to Blacks and it is obvious that it is not because of the lack of ability to succeed. Today we have more opportunity than in the past and this is for ALL. It is the job of the teacher to teach it and the student to mastre it. Make the most of your opportunity – NOW!