โ Scribed by R.H.O.
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Full Value From Peanuts.--Progress toward fully utilizing the peanut has been announced by the U. S. Department of Agriculture in reporting the results of laboratory scale experiments at the Southe/m Regional Research Laboratory at New Orleans where research on the utilization of this crop is under way. The new byproduct is a variety of feed yeast that has proved of value in livestock and poultry feeding. The process also lessens a sewage disposal problem.
When oil is extracted from peanuts, the high protein meal remaining is valuable as a livestock feed, but research has shown that it may be even more valuable for industrial uses in which the purified protein is used for tacky and remoistening adhesives, and for coatings, sizings and fibers. After the protein is separated from the meal, a waste liquor remains which may contain one per cent. of sugars. Such a liquor ferments and is likely to be a nuisance in streams, causing odors, and killing fish by exhausting oxygen in the water.
But by controlling this fermentation in a tank--sterilizing the liquor, and then inoculating it with the food yeast, Torulopsis utilis--disposal is simplified and the sugars are converted into a protein feed product valuable for its vitamin content.
This yeast has also been used successfully in fermenting similar liquors from sweetpotato starch mills. The addition of a nitrogen salt to the waste liquor improves the growth of the yeast. The laborato#y work indicated that the fermentation would do well as a continuous process with waste water feeding into the tankand the yeast being removed as it grew.
At the other end of peanut utilization, the Department's Northern Regional Research Laboratory at Peoria, II1., has discovered that ground peanut hulls combined with certain other materials are satisfactory for the manufacture of a cork substitute manufactured in sheets or for molding into crown caps for bottles.
R. H. O.
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