Gail Borden Jr: Father of the process of milk condensing

Condensed milk has 60% of the water removed and sucrose added to produce a product with a total carbohydrate concentration of 56%. Nicolas Appert condensed milk in France in 1820, and Gail Borden Jr. did the same in the United States in 1853, in reaction to the difficulty of storing fresh milk for more than a few hours.

The basic process for preservation of unsweetened condensed milk by heat sterilization was conceived by John B. Meyenberg in 1882, a Swiss citizen, and an employee of the Anglo Swiss Condensed Milk Company.

Gail Borden (November 9, 1801 – January 11, 1874), surveyor and inventor, New York-born began experimenting in 1849 with a condensed-beef-broth and-flour concoction that he called a meat biscuit. It was a pemmican-like food that could be taken into the field or on long trips without spoiling.

While returning from a trip to England in 1851, Borden was devastated by the death of several of his children, apparently from poor quality milk obtained from shipboard cows. Borden wondered how milk could be processed and packaged so that it would not go bad. This was a problem not only on long ocean voyages but on land, as well, because at the time, milk was shipped in unsanitary oak barrels and spoiled quickly.

During promoting his meat biscuit, Borden began to experiment with condensing a number of products, including milk, coffee, tea, and cider. Borden was inspired by the vacuum pan he had seen being used by Shakers to condense fruit juice, and he was at last able to reduce milk without scorching or curdling it.

In what proved later to be his most successful venture, he created a commercially viable method for producing condensed milk that was consistently pure and long-lasting. His condensed milk was sweetened with sugar.

Even then, his first two factories failed, and only the third, built in New York with his new partner, Jeremiah Milbank, produced a usable milk derivative that was long-lasting and needed no refrigeration.

In 1856, Gail Borden patented the evaporation of milk at reduced pressure, using the concentrate to make sweetened condensed milk.

Jeremiah Milbank, a New York financier, met Borden in 1858. They quickly became partners, founding the New York Condensed Milk Company, and sales increased markedly. In 1864, the first Eagle Brand Consolidated Milk production plant opened on the east branch of the Croton River in southeastern New York.

In 1884, John B. Meyenberg patented a process for sterilizing concentrated milk in tinned cans, which were rotated under pressurized steam, allowing for a relatively short sterilization time.
Gail Borden Jr: Father of the process of milk condensing

Page brothers (Charles and George) and Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company

In 1856, Gail Borden invented and received the patent for his process of condensing milk. Canned condensed milk proved invaluable as a military ration in the 1860s.

Charles Page founded the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company as a limited company in Cham, Switzerland, in 1866. The company's name was meant to flatter the British, to whom Page hoped to sell a great deal of his condensed milk.

His first partner is his brother George, who goes on to become director of the company, which is founded in 1866, and has the task of learning about the manufacture of condensed milk from Gail Borden in the US. This involved heating milk to evaporate some of the water, then adding sugar as a preservative.

Page brothers had seen the growth of condensed milk in the United States and wanted to manufacture milk near to a large, quality source.

A year later, the Pages opened Europe’s first condensed milk factory in Cham, and their Milkmaid Brand began to roll off the production line. The company expanded its operations beyond Switzerland's borders in 1872, when it opened a factory in Chippenham, England.

In 1874, Anglo-Swiss undertook further expansion in England by purchasing the Condensed Milk Company in London. In 1881, the company opened a plant in Middletown, New York. Soon Anglo-Swiss competed successfully with Borden.

In 1905, Nestlé merged with Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company.
Page brothers (Charles and George) and Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company

Milk heat treatment

The term pasteurization has been coined after the name of Louis Pasteur of France, who in 1860-64 demonstrated that heating wine at a temperature between 122 to 140 ° F killed the spoilage organisms and helped in its preservation.

Although Louis Pasteur pioneered studies on heat treatment for preservation of the wine, pasteurization of milk first was attributed to Dr Frans von Soxhlet of Germany in 1886. He the first person to suggest that milk sold to the public to be heat treated.

Dr Frans von Soxhlet, an agricultural chemist also invented the Soxhlet extractor in 1879 and in 1886 he proposed he proposed that pasteurization be applied to milk in order to prevent disease and spoilage.

The son of a Belgian immigrant, Soxhlet is also known as the first scientist who fractionated the milk proteins in casein, albumin, globulin and lactoprotein. Furthermore, he described for the first time the sugar present in milk, lactose.

Frans von Soxhlet completed his PhD in Leipzig in 1872 before became an assistant at Landwirtschaftliches und tierphysiologisches Institut in Leipzig.
Milk heat treatment

Plate heat exchanger

At the beginning of the 1880s, there was growing public awareness that disease, such as tuberculosis, were spread by ‘raw’ or untreated milk. This initiated the early experiments with milk pasteurization.

The first patent of plate heat exchanger was granted to a German by the name of Albrecht Dracke in 1878. The subsequent years of the late 1800s and early 1900s saw considerable inventive and developmental activity that resulted in several other patents covering different forms of plate heat exchangers.

However, they were not commercially exploited until 1920s. In 1910 Dr Richard Seligman founded APV as the Aluminum Plant & Vessel Company Limited, a specialist fabricating firm. The company supplying welded vessels to the brewery and vegetable oil trades.

The plate heat exchanger (PHE) was invented by Dr Richard Seligman and he introduced the first commercially gasketed plate heat exchanger design in 1923. A plate heat exchanger essentially consists of a number of corrugated metal pales provided with gaskets and corner ports to achieve the desired flow arrangement.

Each fluid passes through alternate channels. Initially, a number of cast gunmetal plates were enclosed within a frame in a manner quite similar to a filter press. The early 1930s, however, saw the introduction of plates pressed in thin gauge stainless steel.
Plate heat exchanger