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The effects of air temperature and product size on drying kinetics, retained total polyphenol content (TPC), hardness kinetics and total colour change (.E) kinetics of ciku (Manilkara zapota) were investigated. In addition, five terms of the theoretical model were used to estimate the effective diffusivity values during drying at temperatures from40OC to 70OC. The drying rates of dried ciku were increased with increasing temperature and decreasing product size. It was found that hardness of ciku dried at temperature higher than 60OC increased significantly, when the moisture content was reduced toless than 0.5 g H2O/g DM (dry basis). In terms of nutritional value, the retained total polyphenol content (TPC) of dried ciku in hot air drying also increasing with temperature. The highest retained TPC was 141 mg GAE/ 100g of samples, which can be obtained from drying at 70OC.

he main objective of this study is to design an energy recovery system for the Proton Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) that will optimize energy use through heat integration. A PEMFC system with a power output of 5 kW was used in the case study. Methanol, which served as primary fuel source of the autothermal reformer (ATR) system, was fed together with steam and oxygen. Based on the conceptual design, the ATR product contains about 73% H2' 2% CO, and 25% C02' The hydrogen-rich reform ate produced by reforming primary fuels in the fuel proC€t::30r ystem, which scontains a significant amount of CO, was reduced further via Water Gas Shift (WGS) reactor, Tubular Ceramic Membrane (TCM), and Pressure Swing Adsorber (PSA) in series. From the plots, the pinch point was determined at 540°C,the minimum process heating requirement from hot utilities QH mon at 140 W, and the minimum process cooling requirement from cold utilities Qc. at 96 W. Furthermore, energy recovery for both heating and cooling purposes aft~; heat integration registered at 92% and 95%, respectively. Also, the number of heat exchangers reduced from 7 to 4 after heat integration.

This paper describes the current status of the petrochemical industry in Malaysia. The industry is broadly categorized into various sector that include the agrochemical and agroprocessing, basic chemicals, industrial gases, oleochemical, petrochemical, surface coatings, and the fine chemicalssector. With regard to industrial development, Malaysia has adopted the Manufacturing strategy and clustering concept for the manufacturing based industry. The main idea is to develop the chemical industry in the form of an industrial clusterwhere industrial symbiosis could tloulish and achieve the national objectives within the next ten years or so. The focus of the paper is, however, on the resource based processing and petrochemical industry in particular.

Refereed/Peer-reviewed A microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a device for the simultaneous treatment of wastewater and the generation of electricity with the aid of microorganisms as a biocatalyst. Membranes play an important role in the power generation of microbial fuel cells. Nafion 117, the most common proton exchange membrane (PEM), is expensive and this is the main obstacle for commercialization of MFC. In this study, four kinds of sulphonated poly ether ether ketone (SPEEK) with different degrees of sulphonation (DS) referred to hereafter as SPEEK 1 (Ds = 20.8%), SPEEK 2 (Ds = 41%), SPEEK 3 (Ds = 63.6%), and SPEEK 4 (DS = 76%), were fabricated, characterized and applied in an MFC. The membranes were characterized by thermogravimetric analysis TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and their morphologies were observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The degree of sulphonation was determined by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Then the membranes were applied to the MFC system. The results indicated that the power produced by MFG with SPEEK 3 (68.64 mW/m(2)) was higher than with the other SPEEK membranes while it was lower than with Nafion 117 (74.8 mW/m(2)). SPEEK3 also had the highest chemical oxygen demand removal (91%) and coulombic efficiency (26%) compared to other SPEEK membranes. The cost evaluation suggests that application of SPEEK 3 is more cost effective than applications of the other types of SPEEK and Nafion 117, due to its high power density generation per cost. Copyright (c) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. usc

Refereed/Peer-reviewed The PS (Polysulfone)/SPEEK (sulfonated poly ether ether ketone) hybrid membranes were fabricated and modified with low and high DS (degrees of sulfonation) for the desalination of brackish water and proton exchange membrane in microbial fuel cell. The results illustrated that SPEEK has changed the morphology of membranes and increase their hydrophilicity. PS/SPEEK with lower DS (29%) had the rejection percentage of 62% for NaCl and 68% for MgSO4; while it was 67% and 81% for PS/SPEEK (76%) at 4 bars. Furthermore, the water flux for PS at 10 bar was 12.41 L m(-2) h(-1). It was four times higher for PS/SPEEK (29%) which means 49.5 L m(-2) h(-1) and 13 times higher for PS/SPEEK (76%) with means 157.76 L m(-2) h(-1). However, in MFC (microbial fuel cell), the highest power production was 97.47 mW/m(2) by PS/SPEEK (29%) followed by 41.42 mW/m(2) for PS/SPEEK (76%), and 9.4 mW/m(2) for PS. This revealed that the sulfonation of PEEK (poly ether ether ketone) made it a better additive for PS for desalination, because it created a membrane with higher hydrophilicity, better pore size and better for salt rejection. Although for the separator, the degree of sulfonation was limited; otherwise it made a membrane to transfer some of the unwanted ions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.