Enhancement of stripping technique for copper(II) detection in water sample using N,N’-bis(2-hydroxy-4-methoxyacetophenone)ethylenediamine (BME)

A highly sensitive, rapid, simple and selective stripping assay for the determination of trace copper(II) is proposed. The selectivity and sensitivity of the electroanalytical process on a glassy carbon (GC) electrode were enhanced using the newly synthesized Schiff base N,N’-bis(2-hydroxy-4-methoxyacetophenone)ethylenediamine (BME). The methodology is based on the accumulation of copper(II)–BME complex onto the GC electrode, followed by electrochemical oxidation of the adsorbed species. The effect of experimental parameters such as pH, BME concentration, scan rate, accumulation time and accumulation potential on the sensitivity of copper(II) detection were investigated. Under the optimal conditions, BME has successfully enhanced the copper(II) detection using the GC electrode by nearly 95% with detection limit (LOD) of 2.6 ngL−1. The effects of interfering ions such as Cd(II), Zn(II), Fe(II), Cr(III) and Pb(II) were also investigated. The applicability of this technique was illustrated by the determination of copper(II) ion in tap water

Nilai C1/Br dan Halida/pb di dalam minyak petrol tempatan

Unsur Br (dan C1) juga) sering dikaitkan dengan logam Pb sebagai bahan pencemaran dari ekzos automobile, sehubungan dengan ini, kajian telah dijalankan bagi menganalisis unsure Br dan C1 di dalam sample minyak petrol daripada 6 buah syarikat pengeluar minyak petrol terkemuka di Negara ini. Nisbah C1/Br yang diperolehi adalah di antara 0.017 - 0.515, manakala nisbah puratanya ialah 0.322  0.200. Anggaran purata Br/Pb ialah 0.862, manakala nilai purata bagi C1/Pb ialah 0.195. Keputusan kajian tersebut menunjukkan bahawa nilai Br/Pb dan C1/Pb di dalam petrol tempatan tidak sama dengan yang terdapat di Negara-negara lain. Seterusnya faktor-faktor yang menyebabkan perbezaan ini dibincangkan di dalam kertas kerja ini

Landfill leachate treatment using copas

Human activities always generate solid wastes. Solid wastes is usually handled by processes such as, collection, transportation, sorting, recycling and disposal at dumping sites. As a result, the dumping sites become concentrated with wastes and may affect the environment. Most dumping sites generate landfill leachate which could pollute the water body nearby. Examples of chemical characteristic of leachate is shown in Table 1. It includes heavy metals such as cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) (Fadil, 1994 and Norhayati et al., 1994). As shown by some reports, heavy metal can be removed by activated carbon (Reed, et al.,1995). Activated carbon also can reduce COD and metals from landfill leachate (Salim, 1992). By using the concept of activated carbon adsorption, some agricultural base materials were studied for their ability to remove heavy metals from water samples (Fadil et al., 1994). It is the intention of this paper to present a report on the ability of carbon which was made of oil palm shell to be used for heavy metal removal from water and landfill leachate samples

MOPAS for metal removal

MOPAS for metal remova

Local and global messages for prompting energy conservation behaviour: an experimental study in university

To create a cost effective environment during the management of building facilities, energy conservation is important among building users as it can help to conserve energy and reduce energy cost. To promote energy conservation, the behavior of user should be focused where their behavior should be improved to reduce energy wastage. Prompt is among the simplest and inexpensive behavioural interventions to improve energy conservation behavior. The prompt has been used wisely in healthcare sectors to promote healthy lifestyles, but no recent study on energy conservation behavior. The aim of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of prompt in prompting energy conservation behavior among the building users in university. An experiment was designed and carried out to examine the effectiveness of local and global types prompt messages for prompting efficiency use of energy. This research findings show that there was no significant difference between local and global types prompt messages, however, the findings indicate that both prompt messages were able to prompt the behavior change among the energy users and local type prompt message was more able to prompt the users than global types prompt messages. This finding could provide the useful information to society nowadays on using prompt to manage the energy efficiently

A redox mediated UME biosensor using immobilized chromobacterium violaceum strain R1 for rapid biochemical oxygen demand measurement

An effective ferricyanide-mediated microbial biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) biosensor was constructed and used for BOD determination in a water system. This BOD sensor uses ultramicroelectrode (UME) technology in which the tip of the sensor consists of a two-electrode system (10-µm Pt working electrode and Pt counter electrode). Because of their small size, UMEs have relatively large diffusion layers and small overall currents enabling rapid achievement of useful steady-state conditions with very high scan rates. Living Chromobacterium violaceum R1 cells (isolated from pineapple industry wastewater) were immobilized on the surface of the UME working electrode using a calcium alginate gel and further enclosure by a layer of polyamide membrane. Glucose-glutamic acid (GGA) solution was used as the standard solution. The amperometric measurement was optimized at +450 mV operating potential and 30 mM ferricyanide in a 0.1 M phosphate buffer (pH 7.0) at 26 °C. The sensor exhibited a linear response ranging from 20 to 225 mg O2 L-1 BOD5 for standard GGA solution and 25 to 230 mg O2 L-1 BOD5 for OECD synthetic wastewater with a response time of 30 min. Repeatability and reproducibility of the biosensor were within the limits set by the APHA; i.e., less than 15.4%. The rapid BOD estimation of the biosensor is applicable for measuring samples with a high content of fast and easily assimilated compounds. When used to estimate the BOD of various wastewaters, the developed biosensor provided values comparable to those obtained using the conventional BOD5 method

THE SEVEN CASES UNSTRUCTURED TRIANGULATION TECHNIQUE FOR RADIATIVE HEAT TRANSFER APPROXIMATION IN AN ETHYLENE FURNACE CRACKER

Radiative heat distribution inside an ethylene cracker furnace is often modelled using the finite volume and finite element methods. In both cases, meshes in the form of rectangles and triangles are needed to serve as the approximating points in the domain. In this paper, a new method called the Seven Cases Unstructured Triangulation Technique (7CUTT) is proposed for meshing the domain inside the cracker furnace, integrated with the deployment of sensors on the wall to obtain the boundary value. 7CUTT is an enhanced version of the Standard Advancing Front Technique (SAFT) which two normal cases in SAFT are extended to the total of seven cases for consideration during the element creation procedure for initial mesh generation. The focus of this method is to construct the initial triangular meshes with the requirement of (1) having the location of sensors deployed along the wall as boundary nodes as well as forming boundary elements, (2) generating nodes at a certain boundary with linearly different lengths of boundary edges as interior gradation controls and (3) constructing the triangular element directly in every iteration without having to re-order the Front or delete the existing elements. There are three contributions from this paper, the first one is the introduction of seven extended cases for consideration for the element creation procedure, the second is the layer concept to generate edges with linearly different lengths and the third is the post-processing mesh procedure to improve the quality of the mesh that is suitable for 7CUTT. The final mesh is obtained once the post-processing procedure of improving the mesh quality is applied to the initial mesh. 7CUTT provides the framework for the heat to be approximated using the discrete ordinate method, which is a variant of the finite volume method. Simulation results produced using FLUENT support the findings for effectively approximating the flue gas temperature distribution, the circumferential radiative heat flux incident at the reactor coils as well as the circumferential reactor coil temperature in the furnace at the end of the study

Development of mobile based flood victims medical management system

Flood is the most devastating natural disaster Malaysia has ever seen. In Malaysia, including Sabah and Sarawak, there are 189 river basins (89 in Peninsula Malaysia, 78 in Sabah, and 22 in Sarawak), with the main rivers flowing directly into the South China Sea and 85 of them are prone to repeated floods. The projected area vulnerable to flood catastrophe is around 29,800 km2 or 9% of Malaysia's total territory, affecting nearly 4.82 million people or about 22% of the country's entire population. Humans are affected by floods in a variety of ways. Floods have the worst effect on human health because infectious illnesses spread readily during and after the flood. Furthermore, healthcare services are hampered during the flood season. It is owing to transportation and staffing difficulties, as well as the procedure of documenting flood victims' health reports. The primary goal of this initiative is to assist flood victims in terms of health. It will be easier to seek treatment, record the patient's health concerns online, and notify the hospital immediately if there are patients who need to be sent to the hospital with the information supplied. This system was created with the Android Studio platform as the user interface medium and Google Firebase as the data storage medium

Greenhouse gas emission of organic waste composting: a case study of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia green campus flagship project

Waste generation nowadays is rising in the world and it seems hard to prevent it. Solid Waste Management (SWM) has been a major problem worldwide in most of the fast growing towns and cities among the developing countries all around the world. Food waste and green waste constitute high volumes of municipal solid waste (MSW). The application of compost in the agricultural sector can contribute to sustainable soil health and other co-benefits. The compost produced from biological waste does not contain any chemicals unfavorable to living soil. The objective of this research was to calculate the greenhouse gas emission from the compost processed from the food and green wastes generated on-campus in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) as a pilot project. The result indicated that the composting process promotes the university as a green campus by converting organic wastes into valuable products such as organic fertilizer

Modeling physical interaction and understanding peer group learning dynamics: Graph analytics approach perspective

Physical interaction in peer learning has been proven to improve students’ learning processes, which is pertinent in facilitating a fulfilling learning experience in learning theory. However,observation and interviews are often used to investigate peer group learning dynamics from a qualitative perspective. Hence, more data-driven analysis needs to be performed to investigate the physicalinteraction in peer learning. This paper complements existing works by proposing a frameworkfor exploring students’ physical interaction in peer learning based on the graph analytics modeling approach focusing on both centrality and community detection, as well as visualization of the grap model for more than 50 students taking part in group discussions. The experiment was conducted during a mathematics tutorial class. The physical interactions among students were captured through an online Google form and represented in a graph model. Once the model and graph visualization were developed, findings from centrality analysis and community detection were conducted to identify peer leaders who can facilitate and teach their peers. Based on the results, it was found that five groups were formed during the physical interaction throughout the peer learning process, with at least one student showing the potential to become a peer leader in each group. This paper also highlights the potential of the graph analytics approach to explore peer learning group dynamics and interaction patterns among students to maximize their teaching and learning experience