The meeting commenced with Prof. Nor Aishah’s briefing about CREG to Dr. Kawamoto.

This was followed with presentation by Yani, our latest Ph.D student who was also recently completed her Masters degree with CREG.

After several students presentation, Dr. Kawamoto provides his briefing about their research group in Kyoto Universiti.

Everybody were paying extra attention because the research culture in Japan is really different than us in Malaysia.

At the end, a token of appreciation by Dr. Kawamoto to Prof. NASA.

It was a pleasure to announce that CREG won another Gold Medal award in the INATEX 2011 competition held in Dewan Sultan Iskandar yesterday. The research that won the Gold medal belongs to Yani. The title of the research is Production of Biodiesel from Waste Cooking Oil.

My English may not be good and clear. I hope you can bear with it. Check it out…

There are two main methods which cover a wide area of biomass conversion technologies, thermo chemical conversion and bio chemical conversion. To obtain the energy, the combustion factor is the key for both technologies. Hardware biomass conversion systems can be stationary or mobile. The hardware mobile systems are usually used in rural areas supplying power for a small number of homes, such as in a village, or for powering small to medium size countryside businesses. However, the principle for both stationary and mobile hardware combustion systems is similar.

The combustion can be made either using a furnace or a boiler. A furnace (direct combustion) is one of the simplest methods used to obtain energy by burning the biomass materials in a chamber to obtain heat in the form of released hot gases.

A boiler for biomass can be used to transform the heat into steam, this steam is used to turn the turbine to generate electricity.

There are three different types of boilers:

1. Pile Burners

2. Stationary or Travelling Grate Combustors

3. Fluidized-Bed Combustors

‘Direct Firing’ can be divided into four different methods. These methods come under the titles of Pile Burner, Spreader Stoker, Fluidized Bed and Suspension.

The other method is Gasification, which can be divided into five different sub-branches, i.e. Biological Gasification, Landfill Gas, Pyrolysis, Thermal Gasification and Micro Scale Biomass.

Direct Combustion, gasification, pyrolysis and methanol production all come under ‘thermo-chemical’ conversion process. On the other hand, anaerobic digestion and ethanol production come under ‘biochemical’ conversion process type. Biodiesel production comes under ‘chemical’ conversion process.

A number of uses can be made from biogas produced via anaerobic digestion or pyrolysis. These are:

1. Fuel for internal combustion engines

2. To produce heat for commercial and domestic needs

3. As a transport fuel

The following are three different methods for obtaining gases, as a source of energy, from biomass materials.

Gasification

Gasification is described as the process of converting the organic fraction of biomass at higher temperatures and with the presence of air, into a gas mixture with fuel value and more variation than the original solid biomass. This gas can be combusted to produce heat and steam, and can be used in internal combustion engines or gas turbines to produce electricity as well as mechanical energy. Reportedly, the production of electricity via gas turbines combined with steam cycles is the most effective and economical use of the gaseous product. Several biomass gasification processes have been developed (and/or under development) for electricity generation that offer advantages over direct burning, such as higher efficiency and cleaner emissions. Many of the gasification systems are currently at the demonstration stage, and the development of these efficient systems for electricity production is essential: BIGCC (Biomass Integrated Gasification and Combined Cycle) and BIG-STIG (Biogas Integrated Gasification Steam Injected Gas Turbine) plants can achieve efficiencies of 42-47%. Significant developments have been made over the past fifteen years in the field of biomass gasification, especially in the area of medium to large-scale electricity production. Gas cleaning to improve the quality of gas is a crucial issue in both combustion and gasification systems, and requires measures such as reduction of emissions and removing of particulates and tars.

Anaerobic digestion

Anaerobic digestion is the decomposition of wet and green biomass through bacterial action in the absence of air. Generally speaking, anaerobic digestion process is made up of four main biological and chemical stages:

1. Hydrolysis

2. Acidogenesis

3. Acetogenesis

4. Methanogenesis

It usually has a mixed gas output of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2), called biogas. Landfill gas is the result of the anaerobic digestion of municipal solid waste buried in landfill sites. The methane gas produced in landfill sites eventually escapes into the atmosphere. However, the gas can be extracted by inserting perforated pipes into the landfill.

There are a number of benefits related to anaerobic digestion; these can be described under the environmental benefits, rather than on the technical or commercial side. Anaerobic digestion decreases methane emissions and can provide a good treatment system for organic waste and consequently can prevent groundwater contamination and reduce odour from the local environment associated with this waste.

‘The Government should review its current strategy for the anaerobic digestion sector. In doing so, we recommend that it considers practical and financial mechanisms for encouraging the expansion of the UK’s AD capacity, while ensuring that new AD systems deliver the optimal balance between production of biogas and prevention of uncontrolled methane emissions.’ (Biomass Task Force. 2005).

Pyrolysis

In a temperature ranging from 300 to 700 °C and with the absence of oxygen, the chemical decomposition of organic materials by heating is a process called pyrolysis. However, in most cases and in practical terms the presence of oxygen cannot be eliminated completely.

The final outcome of the pyrolysis process is that the organic materials are transformed into gases and leave a solid residue (coke) made up from carbon and ash. Biomass gasification can also be integrated with fuel cells. Also, using pyrolysis, a solid biomass can be liquefied ‘direct hydrothermal liquefaction’ (USDE, 2005). One of the main benefits of flash pyrolysis is that fuel production has been separated from power generation. This type of method is still at the demonstration stage. As the development is still in the early stages, like the rest of the bio-oil upgrading processes, there is still a need to neutralise negative aspects, such as corrosivity and low heating value. In conjunction with the existing systems, pyrolysis can be used for large scale electricity production.

This article is written by Najib Altawell with references from “Biomass Task Force (2005) Biomass task force report to the government. Department of environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) publications, London” and “USDE (2005) Energy efficiency and renewable energy. Biomass”. The article was adopted from http://EzineArticles.com/6256907.

Image source credited to: http://www.wtert.eu/default.asp?Menue=12&ShowDok=15

May 1 , 2011

Interested local Ph.d students please contact :
Professor Dr. NorAishah Saidina Amin.
Chemical Reaction Engineering Group
Faculty of Chemical Engineering
UTM

Tel: 07-553-5579/012-716-5490
Email: noraishah@cheme.utm.my/profnoraishah@yahoo.com

Title of project: Photocatalytic microreactor for conversion of methane and carbon dioxide to methanol

Duration: 5-6 semesters

Requirement: 2nd upper or 1st class

Closing dateline: July 31, 2011

Well done!!!

1. Mr Zaki Yamani Zakaria

2. Ms Nazlina Ya’ani

3. Mr Javaid Akhtar

4. Ms Nurul Huda Zamzuri

5. Ms Wan Nor Nadyaini Wan Omar

The following are the top 10 most-accessed articles from Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research during the third quarter of 2010:

Kinetics Study and Characteristics of Silica Nanoparticles Produced from Biomass-Based Material
Tzong-Horng Liou and Shao-Jung Wu

Cigarette Butts and Their Application in Corrosion Inhibition for N80 Steel at 90 °C in a Hydrochloric Acid Solution
Jun Zhao, Ningsheng Zhang, Chengtun Qu, Xinmin Wu, Juantao Zhang and Xiang Zhang

Methods for Pretreatment of Lignocellulosic Biomass for Efficient Hydrolysis and Biofuel Production
Parveen Kumar, Diane M. Barrett, Michael J. Delwiche and Pieter Stroeve

Membrane Gas Separation: A Review/State of the Art
P. Bernardo, E. Drioli and G. Golemme

Nanostructures with Animal-like Shapes
Boris I. Kharisov, Oxana V. Kharissova and Miguel Jose-Yacaman

Synthesis of Biodiesel via Acid Catalysis
Edgar Lotero, Yijun Liu, Dora E. Lopez, Kaewta Suwannakarn, David A. Bruce, and James G. Goodwin, Jr.

Photobioreactor Design for Commercial Biofuel Production from Microalgae
Aditya M. Kunjapur and R. Bruce Eldridge

Milking Diatoms for Sustainable Energy: Biochemical Engineering versus Gasoline-Secreting Diatom Solar Panels
T. V. Ramachandra, Durga Madhab Mahapatra and Karthick B

Chemical Reaction Engineering
Octave Levenspiel

Recent Advances on the Soluble Carbon Nanotubes
Boris I. Kharisov, Oxana V. Kharissova, Hector Leija Gutierrez and Ubaldo Ortiz Méndez

Save your precious time and money by using this approach to fractional-factorial design of experiments (DOE) for studies involving 6 to 7 variables. Highly recommended.

To read the article which was written by Joseph F. Louvar from Wayne State University, which was published in CEP, January 2010 edition, please download the article from the link below:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/qfxx293n96p92bk/simpligyexptdesign.pdf

Contributed by Prof. Dr. Nor Aishah Saidina Amin.

I’m preparing a list of universities, institution, research centers etc that provides catalyst characterization equipments. The list, as can seen below, will be updated from time to time and I hope this can be a good reference for our research. If you know any place or any institution or any organization that provides related characterization  equipment, please let me know in the comment area or contact me at zaki.yz[alias]gmail.com. I welcome any input and feedback from everyone, not only CREG members, researchers in Malaysia, but from all over the world.

A) X-Ray diffraction (XRD)
1. Faculty of Mechanical, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia; En. Zainal (0197512727)
2. Ibnu Sina, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
3. Faculty of Science – Chemistry Department, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

B) Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)
1. Faculty of Mechanical, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (SEM-EDX & FESEM)
2. Ibnu Sina, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (FESEM-EDX)
3. Faculty of Science – Chemistry Department, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

C) Nitrogen Adsorption (NA)
1. Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
2. Ibnu Sina, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

D) Fourier Transform Infra Red (FTIR)
1. Faculty of Chemical Engineering (N29), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
2. Ibnu Sina, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
3. Faculty of Science – Chemistry Department, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
4. AMTEC, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

E) Atomic Adsorption Spectroscopy (AAS)
1. Faculty of Science – Chemistry Department, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
2.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

F) Temperature Program Desorption Ammonia (TPD-NH3)
1. Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
2. Universiti Sains Malaysia, Engineering Campus, Tel:  +604-599 6411, Fax: +604-594 1013; DR AHMAD ZUHAIRI ABDULLAH, Email: chzuhairi@eng.usm.my

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

G) Temperature Program Desorption Reduction Oxidation (TPDRO)

1. Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
2. Ibnu Sina, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

H) Thermal Gravimetric Analysis (TGA)

1. AMTEC, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
2. Ibnu Sina, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

I) Thermal Gravimetric Analysis – Differential Thermal Analysis (TGA-DTA)

1. Ibnu Sina, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
2. Faculty of Science – Chemistry Department, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (DTA only)

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

J) X-Ray Florescent (XRF)

1. Faculty of Mechanical, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

If you have or know other institution that provide any characterization equipment, please contact me at zaki.yz[alias]gmail.com. I’ll update the list for the benefit of all of us….

Thanks.