Abstract
THE report of the East African Industrial Research Board for the year ended December 31, 1946 (Nairobi. Is. 6d.), includes the report of the acting chairman, Mr. H. B. Stant, and separate reports on the progress of the main research projects. The most important of these for agriculture in East Africa is the calcination of roek phosphate with soda ash ; a further forty tons of the silicophosphate obtained have been prepared in the pilot rotary kiln for field experiments. The ceramics branch has developed a new technique for building bricks by bonding non-plastic quarry waste with the minimum of highly plastic clay and firing in a kiln to give a building block cheaper than dressed natural stone. Advice has been given to the commercial pottery branch of the Industrial Management Board, and the production of alternative lowcost building materials has received attention, particularly murrain, a natural formation consisting of coarse materials, rotten rock or concretionary iron ironstone bonded with clay. Promising results have been obtained in the extraction of pyrethrins from fresh flowers by a three-stage counter-current process, and a hæmoglobin digestion method has been developed for the assay of papain. Further work has been carried out in connexion with the manufacture of totaquina, including improved methods of analysis and study of the conditions for the maximum recovery of quinine and cinchonidine. A method of testing samples of diatomites as filter aids was standardized, and the amelioration of the pollution of streams by effluents from coffee and sisal factories was studied intensively ; small-scale plant trials indicate that at least 90 per cent purification of the coffee effluents can be effected by biological filtration. Work was completed on the tannin content of different varieties of mangrove bark.
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Industrial Research in East Africa. Nature 161, 122–123 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/161122e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/161122e0