Sandwich Scholarships

by Samuel Sarmat
(Eldoret, Kenya)

I am a researcher and a lecturer aged 44 working in the department of chemical and process engineering of Moi university and also a second year PhD student in the school of environmental studies and the title of my research proposal is: 'Vegetable refinery technology for sustainable development in rural Kenya'. The 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) approach to pollution control or waste management demands a transformation to the 4R (Replace, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) approach as far as technology in the pulp and paper industry is concerned.

I need a scholarship that affords me free use of a well equipped laboratory facility for the analysis of lignin polymers (IR and NMR analysis), physico-chemical analysis of the resulting pulp and pentose sugars (ribose, mannose,arabinose). The hypothesis of my proposal is that this is an environmentally friendly technology and that the delignification mechanism is not a chemical reaction-controlled mechanism but that it is an extraction-controlled physical operation mechanism similar to the leaching operation in the sugar industry. Three months per year for two years is sufficient in the facility. A facility even within Kenya is welcome.