UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

ALEXANDER P. ANDERSON, OF NEW YORK, N.Y.

ART OF TREATING STARCH MATERIAL.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 707,892, dated August 26, 1902.
Application filed February 12, 1902. Serial No. 93,797. (No specimens.)

To all whom it may concern:
Be it known that I, ALEXANDER P. ANDER-
SON, a citizen of the United States of America,
residing at New York, in the State of New
York, have invented certain new and useful
Improvements in the Art of Treating Starch
Materials; and I do hereby declare the follow-
ing to be a full, clear, and exact description
of the invention, such as will enable others
skilled in the art to which it appertains to
make and use the same.
My invention relates to the art of treating
all kinds of starch materials - that is to say,
starch or materials containing starch or mix-
tures of both.
The objects of my invention are to provide
a dry method of swelling starch materials of
all kinds to render them porous, thereby en-
hancing their nutritive value and rendering
them more readily and completely digested
than when used in their present form and
rendering them more valuable otherwise in
the arts - for example, for sizing and as pastes.
My invention is based on the discovery
which I have made that the liquid generally
assumed to be composed mainly of hygro-
scopic water contained in the starch gran-
ules of all starch materials when in a sub-
stanially air-dried state may be utilized to
expand or swell the same evenly and homo-
geneously in all directions, thus loosening the
starch particles and rendering the starch ex-
ceedingly porous, so as to be readily digested
and readily taken up by liquids. This ac-
tion takes place whenever the liquid is caused
to suddenly change to the gaseous condition,
or, in other words, to explode, with such ra-
pidity that the same cannot escape with suffi-
cient speed by diffusion through the coatings
of the starch granules. These coatings
of the starch granules are composed of what is
known as "starch cellulose," and it is a part
of my discovery that the same will retain the
gases within the granules to a sufficient ex-
tent to cause the explosive action above re-
ferred to if a method be devised whereby
the liquid contained in the granules passes into
the gaseous state with sufficient rapidity.