Norbert Rillieux
Engineer who made industrial evaporation efficient
At a glance
- Inventor
- Norbert Rillieux
- Life
- 1806–1894
- Birthplace
- New Orleans, Louisiana
- Country
- United States / France
- Region
- United States
- Era
- 1800s
- Fields
- Science & Engineering, Industry & Materials
- Evidence
- Verified
- Records
- 1 in this archive
What they did
Rillieux, educated in Paris and briefly an instructor in applied mechanics at the École Centrale, designed a multiple-effect evaporator that reused the steam from one boiling vessel to heat the next.
Historical context
Sugar was refined by the 'Jamaica train': gangs of enslaved workers ladling boiling cane juice between open kettles. It was lethally dangerous, wasted enormous quantities of fuel, and scorched the product.
Obstacles
A free man of colour in antebellum Louisiana, Rillieux could patent and consult but not move freely; he eventually returned permanently to France, where he later worked on Egyptology and deciphering hieroglyphic texts.
The legacy
Multiple-effect evaporation is still standard chemical-engineering practice — in sugar, paper, desalination, dairy and pharmaceutical plants worldwide.
The evidence
US Patent 4,879 — Improvement in sugar-making
Primary recordNorbert Rillieux and a Revolution in Sugar Processing
Institutional record
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 1
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.