No 2 Process Lab

Number Two Process Lab at Kandos Cement Works occupies a small interior room near the kiln building, fitted out for the routine chemical and physical testing that monitored cement quality through every shift. A long bench runs along one wall, fitted with a sink, gas taps, and a row of laboratory glassware: beakers, flasks, sample bottles in racks. A drying oven and a small muffle furnace sit on a separate steel bench against the opposite wall. The lab is lit overhead by fluorescent tubes, half of them dead. Sample trays stacked at one end of the bench still carry residue from the last batch. The floor is laid in pale industrial tile, marked here and there with the stains of spilled reagent. A clock on the wall has stopped.

Every cement works of this scale ran a laboratory or two on site. Samples of raw meal, clinker, and finished cement were taken at intervals through each shift and tested for fineness, chemical composition, and setting characteristics. The results fed back into the kiln and mill control settings, keeping the product within the specifications the plant supplied against. Process labs like Number Two were the technical anchor of the plant's quality system across its 95-year operational life. Kandos closed in September 2011. The bench glassware and the ovens have stayed in place since.