UCSI students bag three gold medals at international exhibit

PERLIS: UCSI University’s Chemical Engineering students took the plaudits in the recent 5^th International Engineering Invention & Innovation Exhibition (i-ENVEX 2014) 2014 in Kangar, bagging three gold medals and one silver medal for their efforts. The gold medals comprise the Malaysian Invention and Design Society (MINDS) Gold Award and two category awards. 

Having edged out more than 87 entries from local and foreign institutions of higher learning (IHLs) in countries like Korea, Taiwan, Croatia, Iraq, Ukraine, Indonesia, Cambodia and Romania, the students were ecstatic about their win. 

Notably, the competition cum international exhibit necessitated the participants to present their final year projects to the public and a panel of internationally recognised Malaysian researchers.

For Chin Chun Man and Selvaraja Guala Segaran, the competition cum international exhibit was an amazing experience.

Bagging two gold medals – the Malaysian Invention and Design Society (MINDS) Gold Award and one category awards, the team presented their final year project on the production of bio-products as a source of energy and waste water treatment. 

Explaining the project, Chin points out that the raw material used was palm oil sludge – waste that is usually disposed after palm oil production.

“We converted the waste to two products – namely, bio-oil and bio-char – from the palm oil sludge fast pyrolysis process,” he says.

“Bio-oil is a carbon-based liquid fuel that is a potential feedstock for fuel while bio-char can be used as a heat source and remove heavy metal in wastewater.”

Through the project, the team – including Teoh Kai Wen who was unable to attend the exhibit due to the limited number of participants – developed an alternative fuel source to not only overcome fossil fuel dependence but to also reduce pollution resulting from fossil fuel production.

Bagging the third gold medal for UCSI, Wong Jing Ren also developed a new cellulase enzyme that may be able to minimise environmental problems associated with its usage in the industrial process and other applications.

“It combines both the immobilisation of cellulase enzyme (attachment of cellulase to a solid support) and functionalisation (surface modification) of multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) processes,” Wong explains.

“The past few decades have seen cellulase enzyme being used as the catalyst in industrial processes but large quantities are often involved and the associated purchase cost for raw cellulase is very high.”

“There were other limitations as well but these only spurred me on to develop a solution to address these concerns.” 

Shapnathayammal A/P Sekhar – whose research was titled, ‘Absorption and kinetic study on removal of Mg2+ from waste water using rice husk based magnetic bio-char – also won a silver medal for her research.