OCR Text |
Show PRACTICAL TEST OF NEW PROCESS FOS HANDLING OF FRUIT Herman Harms, Utah state (herniate left this afternoon for San Franelsao, where he will superintend the trial packing of fruit under the process to bs exploited by the recently organized International In-ternational company, a concern which aims to place fresb fruit on the market the year around. The company includes some prominent promi-nent Utah oracials, who aim to develop 'commercially a process of packing fruit which uses nitrogen as a preservative, excluding oxygen, the active gas in (tie air. from contact with the fruit. It is stated that fruit has been success fully kept seven years by this process: and also that it has been shipped from San Francisco to London and, having been pocked in the green state, arrived so green that it had to he kept several weeks before it was ripe nongh for markt. Mr. Harms will watch the packing of bananas, strawberries, oranges and other oth-er perishable fruits, processed as they arrive on the market in San Francisco. He will be able to certify as to the condition con-dition of the fruit when it was packed and as to the purity of tha nitrogen used. The fruit will then be brought to Utah, and after a considerable length of time, sufficient to prove the eeOiciency of the process, will be placed on public exhibition. comparative simple. The bananas, peaches, or whatever it may be, are limply pasted rapidly through sulphur fumes to destroy germs and then placed in a chamber that can be made air tight, in boxes which can be readilv sealed bv a mechanical device. AH the air possible is then pumped from the chamber and then nitrogen is let into the chamber at about air pressure. Then the boxes are sealed and ready for shipment. .... It is said that a carload of fruit can be handled in this manner in an hour or two and that a plant with a capacity of fifty carloads a day could be built here and would be able to take care of the Utah crop for two years. The boxes used are specially treated to close up the pores in the paper, preventing pre-venting the readv ingress of air, or the escape of the nitrogen. This, however, i lm ;ntoA nut would not take Place very rapid I v, anywal. because the nitrogen nitro-gen is packed at about air pressure. By actual experiment, the statement is made, it has been found that nitrogen in ordinary pasteboard boxes, not treated treat-ed was found to have onlv 2 per cent of'oxvgen after five months. Air eon-tains eon-tains about one fifth oxvgen. the remainder re-mainder being chiefly nitrogen. It is pointed out that if it is successful suc-cessful the new process will mean a revolution in the fruit industry; and also in the methods of preserving frnits for the household, since most persons would prefer the fresh fruit to the bottled product, if it could be had all tb year round. |