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Discharge of wastewater with high organic materials demands a significant development of polymeric ultrafiltration membrane for efficient treatment. Among the various nanomaterials used as additives in the polymeric membrane, copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) were particularly notable. The nanoparticles are available at an inexpensive cost, with vast surface area and ease of surface functionalization. However, the nanoparticle tends to agglomerate in the polymeric membrane due to the high surface activity of particles with smaller sizes. Surface modification of CuO NPs using amino acid L-cysteine as a stabilizer can overcome this problem. In this work, the surface modification process undergoes ultrasonication to create covalent anchoring at different ratios of L-cysteine to CuO NPs. Preparation of dope solution involves the addition of 18.0 wt.% polysulfone (PSf) and 5 wt.% polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). Then, the fabrication of the flat sheet membranes employs an immersion precipitation process. The TEM and FTIR analysis confirmed the presence of modified CuO NPs. Investigation using SEM, AFM, porosity, tensile strength, and zeta potential thoroughly characterized the membrane. Measurements of contact angle and water content uptake determined the membrane hydrophilicity. Evaluation of pure water flux (PWF), protein rejection, antifouling capability, and filtration performance of synthetic poultry wastewater propose the membrane separation performance. Data revealed that modified nanoparticles improved the ability of the membrane to resist fouling, and BSA rejection was above 95%. Accordingly, the PSf membrane with a 1:1 ratio of L-cysteine to CuO NPs showed the best UF performance.

This article discusses the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) in the context of the research project investigating educators’ transition traditional teaching to active learning. Engineering education researchers are increasingly interested in qualitative data analysis to study social phenomenon on teaching and learning. We describe the research design in phases that show the pragmatic approach to conduct FGD. This study employed FGD using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as the methodology to develop an interview protocol. We present an analysis of a two-hour interview conducted with a group of lecturers at one of the university in Malaysia using a set of interview protocol. The interview protocol was developed following the principle of CDA to provide answers on the aspect of social practices surrounding the implementation of active learning. With CDA, the FGD interview focused on the issues, obstacles to solve the issues, role of issues in the broader context and ways for the issues to be solved. The findings revealed that FGD enables the data collection and analysis to investigate complex belief on the concept and implementation of active learning. The educators responded positively to interactive active learning activities as a medium for instruction. In addition, the analyses indicate that educators’ resistance emerged from the conflicting imposter syndrome among resistance educators. Uncomfortable with the transition from teacher-centred to student-centred learning, many of them have self-doubt on what is meant by active learning. CDA shows that they have developed a feeling of competence despite evidence of being incompetent in active learning. Further to this, we begin to identify educators’ epistemic knowledge on active learning which leads to the imposter syndrome.

Ramblings of a Chemical Engineer is significantly influenced by the author's personal experiences as a chemical engineer who has worked in a variety of chemical companies. It encompasses his college years, time as a university researcher, and professional career; it is told in a fast-paced way via a succession of vignettes that capture the highlights of the events that formed him into the professional chemical engineer he is today. It was his intention to present information about a profession in chemical engineering to potential students seeking degrees in chemical engineering. It also acts as a guide for aspiring chemical engineers and future engineers, emphasizing what they should aim for and how much fun this profession can be.

As part of an effort to enhance students' first year experience, all Chemical Engineering students in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia are required to take the Introduction to Engineering course. This course is designed to stimulate students’ passion and strengthen motivation for further engineering studies, as well as to enhance their technical knowledge and relevant professional skills. To investigate the impact of the course on students’ knowledge of engineering, an exploratory study is conducted through an open-ended survey, given at the beginning and end of the semester. The analysis shows that the ITE course successfully served the purpose of raising awareness about engineering profession among students, while motivating them through student-centred learning approaches. A qualitative study is also conducted by analysing reflection journals submitted by students to identify the improvement on professional skills that students have developed as they go through the course. This study concludes to show that first year engineering students who have gone through the activities in the course have understood the role of engineers and their job functions. They have also managed to develop professional skills as part of their initial journey to become good engineers.

A design of chemical engineering 1st year integrated courses based on constructive alignment is presented. Introduction to Engineering (ITE) course is designed to stimulate students’ passion, strengthen their motivation, as well as enhancing their technical knowledge and relevant professional skills. ITE course is integrated with an Industrial Seminar and Profession (ISP) course to support the inclusion of stakeholders by inviting them to givepresentations and bringing students for related site visits. Although the ISP is a one-credit course, it is very important to plan and execute the activities hand-in-hand with the ITE course. In this study, reflection and meta-reflection journals which have been designed to integrate both courses have been analysed thematically to evaluate students’ response on the integration part. Besides that, other activities in ISP such as workshops, industrial visit etc that areintegrated with the design and implementation of cooperative problem based learning (CPBL) activities in ITE are highlighted and discussed. All of the above mentioned integrated CPBL are constructively aligned to achieve both course and program outcomes. Such integrated CPBL activities following constructive alignment saves time and effort among lecturers to fulfil the course and programme objectives.

The need of establishment of biohydrogen purification techniques is due the fact that biohydrogen production will be completely transformed into industrial scale soon or later. For biohydrogen process development to be commercially feasible, all the process involved, including purification should be low cost, practical and efficient; particularly when the biohydrogen production is technically challenging. In any case, carbon dioxide and other gaseous impurities are usually evolved during hydrogen production, and highly purified hydrogen is desirable in fuel cells application and other hydrogenation processes. Particularly, is critical to achieve high purity of hydrogen especially in a fuel cell application where it requires 99.9% only hydrogen. This paper reviews four main principle methods that are suitable for biohydrogen mixed gases, namely cryogenic separation, absorption, adsorption and membrane separation. The comparison based on their strengths and weaknesses, regarding the rate and yield of hydrogen, energy requirement and efficiency in terms of hydrogen selectivity, recovery and purity for fuel cell application. Cryogenic separation is among the earliest technique used for hydrogen purification. Though, due to the low temperature requirement, cryogenic separation is least preferred as gas separation is energy intensive and costly. Cyrogenic separation is commonly combine with membrane separation. It was also acknowledged that the membrane separation technique is widely used for biohydrogen purification. Most of research mostly in advancement of the membrane for high selectivity for hydrogen and low selectivity for carbon dioxide.Another method, pressure swing adsorption (PSA) is one of commonly used in conventional hydrogen purification. The hydrogen purity produced by PSA was higher than absorption but the cost to operate it is the same at the expense of low hydrogen recovery. Also, chemical absorption of hydrogen separation from mixed gaseous mixture is discussed due to its simplicity of operation and possible to operate using existing common absorber.

The Introduction to Engineering (ITE) and Industrial Seminar and Profession (ISP) courses conducted at School of Chemical and Energy Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, are integrated courses which implement the Cooperative Problem-based Learning (CPBL) methods in the same semester. Based on this integrated courses, the main aim of this paper is to investigate the qualitative impact of spreadsheet hands-on seminar on the first year students' digital skill. At the beginning of the semester, students are given sustainability-based project to work on, which requires them to collect and to report the data in a series of presentations and written reports. In order to present those data, they need to use analysis tools such as a spreadsheet software. The students are introduced with some in-depth applications of the Microsoft Excel software through the seminar sessions in the ISP course. With the knowledge that the students gain, they are expected to implement it in the CPBL project. A qualitative approach has been adopted to implement the study. Student’s reflections were used as the data source to identify common attributes that they have managed to gain from seminar sessions. This study has found that all students had primarily learned about digital skills. They perceived hand-on activity during the seminar as a good platform to acquire knowledge on basic calculation and developed learning skill on Excel. Moreover, students recognized the skills they are learning will be useful in other courses and future careers.

Traditionally, engineering lecturers do not have sufficient training and background in teaching although training and passion toward teaching could help to make them good engineering educators. However, it takes time for them to learn by themselves by attending training and continuously improving their practice. Recently, Lesson Study is practiced in universities to help improve teaching and learning among lecturers collaboratively. Lesson Study is a form of continuous professional development for educators where a group of educators come together to plan lessons, observe each other’s classes, analyze the classes, and give feedback as well as reflection of the lessons. The learning and development of educators can be faster and more meaningful as Lesson Study is directly improving classroom teaching. This paper describes how Lesson Study was practiced by eight engineering lecturers to teach “Introduction to Engineering” among chemical engineering students that utilize a problem with a sustainable development theme. Frequent meetings and classroom observations were conducted throughout one semester. At the end of the semester, reflections were collected from the lecturers to study the benefits and challenges they encountered. Most of them agreed that Lesson Study helps to improve their lesson planning, time management, collaboration among lecturers, and confidence in teaching. However, Lesson Study requires time to meet, discuss, and plan. Lesson Study is seen as a quick way for experienced lecturers to mentor and coach new lecturers especially in shifting them from a teacher-centered approach to a student-centered approach in engineering education.

In this study, a series of tapioca starch-based low density polyethylene (LDPE) biofilms were prepared via extrusion process and further using blown film extrusion with various contents of starch. Various contents of glycerol and palm oil based olein as plasticizers, both ranging from 5 wt% to 20 wt% were added to blends. The starch-based LDPE blends were undergo the melt flow index analysis to study its processability before further process by film blowing extrusion. Both film blowing ability and melt indexes displayed the effect of both plasticizers in starch-based LDPE blends. Starch based LDPE biofilms with addition of 5 wt% palm oil based glycerin show large influence on the shear viscous properties of starch polymer melts compared to glycerol. Palm oil based glycerin would decrease the viscosity of starch polymer melt since it can decrease the polymer entanglement density and increase the ease of disentanglement.

The paper seeks to describe the utilization of problems for imbuing environmental sustainability and its impact on students' knowledge and behavior change towards sustainability among first year engineering students at all universities in Malaysia. The problem is set in a real world setting to integrate the three pillars of sustainable development (environment, economy and social aspects). To make it realistic, the related industries and agencies are solicited and included in the problem. The problem is framed towards ensuring a learning environment that develops the four domains of knowledge influencing environmental behavior: declarative, procedural, effectiveness and social. A qualitative study was employed in order to answer the research questions. Student's reflection journals written at the end of each stage of the problem were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results showed the convergence of the four domains of knowledge in the problem and supports with CPBL learning environment have changed students' perception associated with sustainability on knowledge, skills, responsibility and readiness to be a future engineer.

The newly developed non-woven filter media are composed of randomly oriented fibrous fibers from lignocellulosic biomass. The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of incorporating chitosan solution in fibrous filter media made from lignocellulosic biomass. The wet lay-up method was adopted for filter media fabrication. Diluted acetic acid was used as medium to dissolve the chitosan powder. Chitosan solution was applied to the fiber using two different deposition techniques, namely, spray method and addition method. The tensile test demonstrated that the filter media using spray method outperformed a filter media made from by addition technique. From the FT-IR spectrum, when the chitosan was added to empty fruit bunches fibers, the absorption peaks at around 1642 cm-1 are clearly identified that showing the presence of amine group in the fibers. The changes observed in the spectra indicated the possible interaction of functional groups between chitosan and cellulose in the fibers. The newly developed non-woven filter media integrates the functions for both the deep filtration and mechanical screen, thus it will be an alternative medium in oily wastewater treatment industry.

Normal 0 false false false EN-MY X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The LDPE was blended with various contents of tapioca starch (10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%) with addition of compatibilizer, which is PE-g-MA and cooking oil as plasticizer. The blends were prepared by co-rotating twin screw extrusion process and characterized by melt flow index (MFI) analysis and tensile test. Tapioca starch based polyethylene biofilms were studied in term of biodegradability by fungi test. The increasing of starch content to LDPE blend was reduced the MFI values and tensile strength but in 30% and 40% of starch content in tensile strength is higher than control LDPE’s strength due to molecular orientation in sample. However, incorporation of PE-g-MA as compatibiliz increase the mechanical properties of starch based polyethylene blends due to the reaction between maleated PE and starch, thus improves adhesion and reduces slippage at matrix-filler interface.ers The increasing of TS also increase the water content in film sample, weight loss percentage in TGA, and percentage degradation of LDPE/TS blend film. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

The newly developed non-woven filter media are composed of randomly oriented fibrous fibers from empty fruit bunch fibers. The wet lay-up method was adopted for filter media fabrication. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of pre-treatment of lignocellulosic fibers on the mechanical properties of fibrous filter media. The study also aims to examine the effect of chitosan application as binder on the tensile strength of fibrous filter media from treated and untreated fibers. The fibers were treated with sodium hydroxide solution, diethyl ether, ethanol and hot water. The pre-treatment enhance the fibrous filter media properties, while filter media from untreated empty fruit bunch fibers showed lower mechanical properties. The changes in mechanical properties followed the order: alkali-treated > diethyl ether > ethanol > hot water > untreated empty fruit bunch fibers.

In this work, enzymatic hydrolysis by cellulase in a soluble and an immobilized form was studied to convert lignocellulosic oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) biomass into fermentable sugars as a feedstock for bioethanol production. The cellulase was covalently immobilized with activated and functionalized polyethylene glycol (PEG) via glutaraldehyde coupling method. As a whole, the immobilized cellulase displayed 50% higher efficiency over free cellulase, in reducing sugar recovery during hydrolysis reactions at pH of 4.8 and temperature of 50°C. From the kinetic study, it showed that Michaelis constant (Km) and limiting velocity (Vmax) of immobilized cellulase were 179.2 mg/ml and 33.5 mg/ml.min respectively, comparable with the value for free cellulose, 171.8 mg/ml and 34.5 mg/ml.min respectively. This result could be attributed to the effect of PEG on the binding cellulase to substrate desorb substrates, and enables free interaction of cellulase to hydrolyse cellulose maximally

The discharge of reactive dyes into the environment has led to the toxicity problems especially to the aquatic organism. Therefore, there is a necessity for treatment of the reactive dyes from wastewater. In this work, Red 3BS reactive dye was separated using supported liquid membrane process. Commercial polypropylene (PP) membrane was used as a support of kerosene-tridodecylamine liquid membrane. Several important parameters such as flow rate, pH of feed phase, initial concentration of feed phase and stripping agent concentration were investigated. The result shows that for 50 ppm Red 3BS solution containing 0.00001M Na2SiO3 almost 100 and 89% of Red 3BS was removed and recovered respectively at the favorable condition of 0.1 M NaOH as a stripping agent, pH 3 of feed phase and 100 ml/min of flow rate.

The aim of this research is to evaluate the feasibility of the fibrous media for removal of total suspended solid and oil grease from palm oil mill effluent (POME). Wet lay-up method was adopted for filter fabrication where empty fruit bunches (EFB) were matted together with chitosan in non-woven manner. Chitosan-filled filter media were tested for their ability to reduce Total Suspended Solids (TSS) and Oil & Grease (O&G) from palm oil mill effluent. Filtration process results indicated that chitosan-filled filter media filtration only removed up to 28.14% of TSS and 29.86% of O&G.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is a major concern for the 21st century society. In engineering education, the importance of ESD is translated in the Washington Accord by making it a requirement for accreditation of engineering programs. In this chapter, we describe the design and implementation of cooperative problem-based learning (CPBL) in inculcating sustainability among engineering students. CPBL is the infusion of cooperative learning principles into the problem-based learning (PBL) cycle to support students in developing the desired outcomes. Students are given a problem on sustainable development in three stages to gradually challenge them with increasing difficulty, while systematically providing the necessary support to scaffold their learning through the CPBL cycle, as they develop the skills to successfully go through the process and solve the problem. Based on an implementation and study on first-year chemical engineering students, there was a significant increase in sustainability knowledge and behavior among students after undergoing the CPBL learning environment.

Water permeability is often used in characterization of the filter media. This paper focuses on the evaluating the effects of the process parameters and design parameters on the permeability of filter media as an output and considered as a response and the prediction of the optimal combination of synthesis parameters with an objective of maximizing the permeability. For this purpose, the Taguchi experimental design technique, analysis of varians (ANOVA), and signal-to noise (S/N) ratio were used. In this study, only eight filter configurations of Taguchi’s L8 orthogonal design were fabricated and tested. As a result from these experiments, the filter configuration satisfying the maximum water permeability value was determined, which show that statistical analysis is a useful method to quantify filter permeability objectively.

Non-woven fibrous filter media from empty fruit bunches were fabricated by using chitosan as a binder. Chitosan powder was dissolved in a 1 wt% aqueous acetic acid, and 1 wt% to 4 wt% of chitosan solutions was prepared. Chitosan-filled empty fruit bunches filter media have been prepared via wet-layup method. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was performed to study various thermal properties of the fibrous filter media. It was found that the fibrous filter media have undergone several decomposition stages over a range of temperatures as revealed by TGA thermo-grams, where the temperature for 10% weight loss for chitosan-filled EFB filter media and binder-less filter media was at 150oC and 300oC, respectively., {"references":["Treviño-Cordero, H., et al., \"Synthesis and adsorption properties of activated carbons from biomass of Prunus domestica and Jacaranda mimosifolia for the removal of heavy metals and dyes from water,\" Industrial Crops and Products, 2013. 42(1): p. 315-323.","Abdullah, M.A., A.U. Rahmah, and Z. Man, \"Physicochemical and sorption characteristics of Malaysian Ceiba pentandra (L.) Gaertn. as a natural oil sorbent,\" Journal of Hazardous Materials, 2010. 177(1-3): p. 683-691.","Kyzas, G.Z., N.K. Lazaridis, and M. Kostoglou, \"Modelling the effect of pre-swelling on adsorption dynamics of dyes by chitosan derivatives,\" Chemical Engineering Science, 2012. 81: p. 220-230.","Shin, E.W., K.G. Karthikeyan, and M.A. Tshabalala, Adsorption mechanism of cadmium on juniper bark and wood. Bioresource Technology, 2007. 98(3): p. 588-594.","Vlaev, L., et al., Cleanup of water polluted with crude oil or diesel fuel using rice husks ash. Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers, 2011. 42(6): p. 957-964.","Rengasamy, R.S., D. Das, and C. Praba Karan, Study of oil sorption behavior of filled and structured fiber assemblies made from polypropylene, kapok and milkweed fibers. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 2011. 186(1): p. 526-532.","Ali, N., et al., Characteristics and oil sorption effectiveness of kapok fibre, sugarcane bagasse and rice husks: Oil removal suitability matrix. Environmental Technology, 2012. 33(4): p. 481-486.","Lee, S.A. and M.A. Eiteman, Ground kenaf core as a filtration aid. Industrial Crops and Products, 2001. 13(2): p. 155-161.","Ahmad, T., et al., Oil palm biomass-based adsorbents for the removal of water pollutantsa review. Journal of Environmental Science and Health - Part C Environmental Carcinogenesis and Ecotoxicology Reviews, 2011. 29(3): p. 177-222.\n[10]\tAhmad, T., et al., The use of date palm as a potential adsorbent for wastewater treatment: A review. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 2012. 19(5): p. 1464-1484.\n[11]\tHan, J.S., et al. Removal Of Phosphorus Using Chemically Modified Lignocellulosic Materials. in 6th Inter-Regional Conference on Environment-Water \"Land and Water Use Planning and Management\". 2003. Albacete, Spain.\n[12]\tHan, J.S., S.-H. Min, and Y.-K. kim, Removal ofmaterial. Forest Products Journal, 2005. 55(11): p. 48-53.\n[13]\tHan, J.S. Stormwater Filtration Of Toxic Heavy Metal Ions Using Lignocellulosic Materials Selection Process, Fiberization, Chemical Modification, And Mat Formation. in 2nd Inter-Regional Conference on Rnvironment-Water 99. 1999.\n[14]\tKim, R.H., et al., Reuse of greywater and rainwater using fiber filter media and metal membrane. Desalination, 2007. 202(1-3): p. 326-332.\n[15]\tHussein, M., A.A. Amer, and I.I. Sawsen, Oil spill sorption using carbonized pith bagasse: trial for practical application. International Journal Science Technology, 2008. 5(2): p. 233-242.\n[16]\tJulkapli, N.M. and H.M. Akil, Thermal Properties of Kenaf-Filled Chitosan Biocomposites. Polymer-Plastics Technology and Engineering. 49(2): p. 147-153."]}

Kertas kerja ini adalah untuk mengkaji penyingkiran kromium (VI) dengan menggunakan solvent impregnated resin (SIR). SIR dihasilkan dari penyilangan antara resin Amberlite XAD–16 dengan Aliquat 336 extractant. SIR disediakan dalam tiga kepekatan yang berbeza iaitu 0.5, 1.0 dan 2.0 gram Aliquat 336 gram XAD–16. Penyilangan SIR disediakan secara kaedah basah. Kesan terhadap pH untuk penyerapan kromium (VI) dikaji serta eksperimen keseimbangan untuk tiga kepekatan berbeza telah dijalankan. Kajian mendapati penyerapan kromium (VI) paling berkesan pada pH 6 di mana sebanyak 90% penyingkiran berlaku pada tahap optimal. Kapasiti penyerapan kromium (VI) adalah 0.47, 0.56 dan 0.63 mmol/g untuk 0.5 g/g, 1.0 g/g and 2.0 g/g. Kata kunci: Kromium (VI), solvent impregnated resins, Aliquat 336 This work investigates the removal of chromium (VI) from aqueous solutions using solvent impregnated resin (SIR). The solvent impregnated resin was formed by impregnating Amberlite XAD–16 resin with Aliquat 336 extractant. Solvent impregnated resins were prepared in three different concentrations; 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 grams Aliquat 336 per gram XAD–16. The solvent impregnated resin was formed using the wet method. The effect of pH on the sorption of chromium (VI) ions was investigated; equilibrium experiments were carried out with the different concentrations of solvent impregnated resin to test the sorption capacity. It was found that the sorption of chromium (VI) was most effective at pH 6. It was found that 90% removal was achieved under optimal conditions. The adsorption capasity for chromium was found to be 0.47, 0.56 and 0.63 mmol/g for 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 g/g, respectively. Key words: Chromium (VI), solvent impregnated resins, Aliquat 336

Fibrous filter media in the form of non-woven filters have been used extensively in water treatment as pre-filters or to support the medium that does the separation. Lignocellulosic such as empty fruit bunches have potential to be used as a low cost filter media as they represent unused resources, widely available and are environmentally friendly. Laboratory filtration tests were performed to investigate the potential application of empty fruit bunches that enriched with chitosan as a fiber filter media to remove suspended solids, oil and grease, and organics in terms of chemical oxygen demand from palm oil mill effluent. The present paper studies the effect of chitosan concentration on the filter media performance. Bench-scaled experiment results indicated that pre-treatment using the fiber filtration system removed up to 67.3% of total suspended solid, 65.1% of oil and grease and 46.1% of chemical oxygen demand. The results show that the lignocellulosic fiber filter could be a potential technology for primary wastewater treatment.