Characterization of particulate matter at construction site

The presence of Particulate Matter (PM) threatens human life especially when it is exposed to unknown air and are frightened if the air inhale will result to death and illness. The PM is known to be invisible, floating in the earth atmosphere and can penetrate respiratory system, blood molecule which later harmful to human life. The emission can existed caused by either the debris from the transport, construction site or even during dry weather. This study reveals the construction site located at Johor Baharu. The Malaysian air pollution standard index (API) will be used as a benchmark for PM pollution. This study aim is to determine the characterization of particulate matter (PM) produced from construction sites with regard to Particulate Matter 10 |am (PM 10) and 2.5 (iim (PM2.5). The experimental study was conducted at building construction sites over a period of work days for 8 hour. Portable air samplers were used to collect the particulate matter that used sticky pads collected settle dust and the weather condition such as temperature, wind speed and relative humidity was measure to examine the relation in emission of particulate matter. The finding from this study shows that construction site activity produce emission of Particulate Matter to the environment and exceeding the Malaysia Air Pollution Index (API) standard of I50|ig/m3. There are 6 days beyond API standard level which 277 fig/m3, 2 days of 208.33 |ig/m3 and 173pg/m3 and 243 pg/m3. The concentration of the data beyond than 50 percent from the API standard and it is need for urgency in concern of construction site environment communities. Beside that chemical element of PM at construction sites presences of component K, Na, Ca and A1 t which indicate from concreting work site activity. Toward the end, the study also shows that’s Pm 2.5 is directly proportion with PM 10. Hence this paper provides a valuable knowledge for various real situations and provides a basis for improving the methodology of collecting PM on construction sites and controlling the production of PM

An Experimental Study on Thermal Properties of Sustainable Bricks Made from Local Industrial Waste

Rapid development around the globe, increase of population and construction with the latest and megastructures have escalated the demand for energy.  The increasing of ambient outdoor temperature requires mechanical air conditioners to maintain a comfortable environment within the building, this contributes to high energy consumption.  Building with good thermal conductivity properties passively reduces energy consumption. This experimental work focuses on four (4) brick systems which are Laterite Clay (LC), Solid Waste Fly Ash (SWFA) Bricks, Laterite SWFA (LS) Brick, and Laterite SWFA Paint Sludge (LSP) Bricks.  Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), Hydrate Lime (HL), and Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (GGBS) were used as stabiliser. Higher thermal conductivity was recorded for all bricks systems that stabilised with HL. Thermal conductivity was significantly reduced when GGBS was incorporated as a blended stabiliser. SWFA bricks system recorded the lowest thermal conductivity of all bricks systems investigated. A lower thermal conductivity value indicates better thermal properties. In all brick-wall systems, the thermal conductivity was found to increase linearly with density

The physicochemical properties of cocoa butter equivalent produced from lipase-catalyzed palm oil and hydrogenated palm oil via physical fractionation

Palm oil (PO) and fully hydrogenated palm oil (FHPO) were subjected to enzymatic interesterification using 9.5% of TLIM Lipozyme. The optimum condition for this process occurred at 62.75°C, with reaction time 172.50 minutes with the ratio of 1:1 for palm oil to hydrogenated palm oil respectively. The Palmitoyl-Oleoyl-Stereoyl (POS) yield obtained was approximately 15%. Product was subsequently subjected to a fractionation process at various cooling temperatures and reaction time. At 34°C, POS achieved was at the highest level which was approximately 31% after 12 hours cooling process. The study of physiochemical properties of the Cocoa butter Equivalent (CBE) fat was determined for the purpose of characterization identification. The properties identified were solid fat content, slip melting point (SMP) and iodine value (IV). The IV and SMP values obtained were 44.30 and 29°C respectively. However, CBE produced almost 0% of Solid Fat Content (SFC) at 30°C. Apart from the high yield of POS, the physicochemical characteristics showed significant compatibility with that of CB. In addition, the crystal polymorph of CBE 34 physicochemical characteristics of CBE34 (β'+β) was similar to CBE. Hence, from this study, CBE 34 is recommended for utilization in the confectionery industry as CBE

Educators’ conception of student assessment and their practices in an institution of education in MARA

Despite existing research on the educators’ conception of student assessment, few studies have attempted to explore this topic among tertiary education system in Malaysia. In response to this gap, this is a concept paper aimed to explore educators’ conception of student assessment and their practices among MARA Professional College lecturers’ (N = 50). Descriptive quantitative method will be used to investigate the lecturers’ conception of student assessment regarding improvement, school accountability, student accountability and irrelevance as well as the relations between different conceptions purposes and their assessment practices. Acquiring further knowledge on assessment will have profound effect on the teachers’ assessment practice. Related organizations should work together in improving the training related to assessment

Effect of particle size on the explosive characteristics of grain (wheat) starch in a closed cylindrical vessel

Wheat starch dust explosion poses a serious threat to food processing and handling industries. This study attempts to show the influence of particle size on some explosive characteristics of wheat starch dust. The maximum pressure, maximum rate of pressure rises, and severity factor index were determined in relation to four different particle sizes of wheat starch dust of 38 µm, 45 µm, 53 µm and 71 µm using the 1.2 L Hartmann explosion tube. The result of proximate and elemental analysis conducted showed the sample has a moisture content of 2.1 %, volatile content of 93.3 % and a calorific value of 15,777.2 J/g. The carbon content of the sample was 40 % and the hydrogen content 6.9 %. The result of the explosive parameter tests showed that the maximum explosion pressure of the wheat starch dust sample increased with decreasing particle size with the highest recorded value of 735 kPa for the particle size of 38 µm

Prediction of patient admissions and bed requirement in inpatient department by using system dynamic simulation

Hospitals play a vital role in a nation’s healthcare system. As the custodian of primary healthcare providers, hospitals strive to provide continuous and comprehensive care to patients. The increase of patients annually sparked the requirement for the hospitals to reasonably plan and project their resources especially treatment beds with the goal to meet the uprising patient’s demand. A similar predicament is also encountered by one of the busiest public hospitals in Selangor, Malaysia. The spike in patients’ demand has reflected in the hospital’s struggle in embracing the rapid changes while providing the best quality health care. Therefore, this study focuses on the hospital’s inpatient department which requires accurate resource planning and precise allocation of treatment beds. Hence, the system dynamics simulation modelling is developed to enable the prediction of the number of inpatient admission and the total number of treatment beds required to meet the demand at the hospital for a period of ten years. The study’s findings revealed an increase in inpatient admission and roughly one bed is required to be added approximately every two years in pursuance to meet the demand. Conclusively, the surge in the inpatient’s admission will parallelly increase the use of treatment beds by the patients. The results formulated by this study will enable the hospital management’s decision making in terms of managing, planning and predicting of resources within their allocated budget while ensuring the betterment of service quality and enhancing the performance of the inpatient department

Dissolved gas analysis (DGA) of vegetable oils under electrical stress

Dissolved gas analysis (DGA) is often use by the utility companies to monitor the health and to detect any faults of their transformers. The concentration and proportion of various gases dissolved in the oil are used to indicate whether there is an electrical or thermal fault within the transformer. A lot of data have been published in the literature on DGA levels for a mineral oil. However, the data for vegetable oils are relatively sparse even though the vegetables oils have been used for more than 10 years in distribution transformers. In this paper, the concentration of dissolved gasses under electrical performance in rice bran oil (RBO) and palm oil (PO) were investigated. These two oils were selected since they show promising potential as alternative insulating dielectric liquid for transformer and easily obtained in Malaysia. Three different gaps (2.5mm, 5mm and 10mm) with sphere to sphere configuration were used in this study. The samples were filtered for three times and dried at 85°C for 48 hours before testing. The AC breakdown experiments were performed in the high voltage laboratory for 100 times. The dissolved gasses from the electrical breakdown voltages were obtained in 2 liter sealed test cell. The gasses concentrations were measured using Gas Chromatography equipment. There were six concentrations of gases contained in the samples which are Hydrogen (H2), Methane (CH4), Ethane (C2H6), Ethylene (C2H4), Acetylene (C2H2) and Carbon monoxide (CO). These gasses were interpreted using IEC ratio, Roger ratio, Dornenburg ratio method and Duval Triangle method in order to investigate whether the existing techniques are suitable for RBO and PO. From the experiments, C2H2 and H2 were the highest amount of gases detected for all samples. The Duval triangle method is the best method in detecting the fault for these oils under electrical breakdown. However, the ratio methods have some limitation in predicting the faults

Investigation on AC breakdown of vegetable oils with insulated electrodes

Most of power transformer design today is still using oil filled type which laminated iron core with paper insulated copper conductors. Oil is an important part in power transformers as electrical insulation, information carrier and cooling medium. Besides oil, paper insulation also plays important role as dielectric material of transformer. The influence of oil especially vegetable-based oil and paper insulation on the dielectric strength of transformer oil has attracted many researchers to do investigation. This paper presents a study of the quasi-uniform field AC breakdown voltages under bare electrodes, paper insulation for barrier and covered electrodes (to replicate the transformer windings) of Palm Oil (PO), Coconut Oil (CO) and Mineral Oil (MO). The data obtained from all tests were analyzed using Gaussian and Weibull distribution to determine the withstand voltages for each type of oils. The experiments were using test cell as specified by IEC 156 with 2.5 mm gap distance under uniform field

Effect of Ultrasonic Amplitude on the Yield and Properties of Barramundi (Lates calcarifer) Skin Collagen

Barramundi skin, a by-product of the fish processing industry, has shown potential as an alternative collagen source. However, the commonly used acid extraction method to produce collagen rendered a low yield requires a lengthy time and is not environmentally friendly. As a result, the adoption of greener technology, such as ultrasound, to improve the conventional extraction process is emerging. This study aimed to investigate the effect of different ultrasonication amplitudes on collagen recovery from barramundi skin. The resulting collagens were evaluated for their protein, hydroxyproline and moisture content, colour, molecular weight distribution, and FTIR spectra. Ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) was performed at 40 (UAE40), 60 (UAE60) and 80 (UAE80) % amplitude for 20 min. For comparison, acetic acid extraction was also carried out to produce acid-soluble collagen (ASC). UAE increased the yield (p<0.05) of collagen from barramundi skin, with UAE80 exhibiting a 7-fold increment compared to ASC. Increasing the ultrasonic amplitude increased the yield considerably but decreased the hydroxyproline content, indicating a reduction in collagen quality. Furthermore, the protein content and SDS-PAGE profile of the extracted collagens revealed that UAE promoted protein degradation. FTIR spectra indicated that despite slightly varying wavenumbers, no detrimental effect on the triple helical structure was seen following UAE with the presence of amides A, B, I, II, and III. Also, the α1, α2 and ß-chains were found in all samples, although the band intensity reduced as the amplitude increased. In conclusion, given the right conditions, UAE could improve the extraction yield without influencing the collagen structure

Enzymatic interesterification, fractional crystallisation and its physicochemical properties of palm-based cocoa butter equivalent with high palmitoyl-oleoyl-stereoyl level

Cocoa butter is important in the confectionary industry because of its organoleptic attributes. This fat provides cool melting in the mouth sensation that gives a satisfying feeling to whoever eats chocolate. Cocoa butter was made from cocoa beans which undergo processes such as, drying, roasting, refining and fractionation. The end products, namely cocoa butter, cocoa liquor and cocoa mass are used mainly for chocolate industry. However, the supply and price of cocoa butter seems to deteriorate over the years, alluring researchers to study and produce alternatives to cocoa butter. Even though exotic fats are available as Cocoa Butter Equivalents, they also have instability issues as cocoa butter. Therefore, palm oil, rich in palmitic acids is explored to be one of the alternatives. In this study, crude palm-based cocoa butter equivalent (CBE) was developed via enzymatic interesterification between palm-based fat and fully hydrogenated fat. Fully hydrogenated fat with low Iodine Value used as the stearic donor to obtain high levels of POS (1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-3-stearoyl-sn-glycerol) triacylglycerols. Response Surface Methodology was used to obtain the optimum percentage of POS response of the interesterified product. The major parameters that influence the enzymatic interesterification reactions such as substrate ratio Palm Oil: Fully Hydrogenated Palm Oil (50:50-100:0 w/w), temperature (65-75°C), incubation time (30-600 minutes) and enzyme load (2-12 % w/w) were used for optimization. Based on the highest yield of POS produced using RSM, the optimal enzymatic parameters were: ratio of palm oil/fully hydrogenated palm oil is 1:1, 9.5% of enzyme load, 172.5 minute of retention time at 63.75°C. To purify the fat, the enzymatic interesterified product was subjected to fractionation process at various cooling temperatures (32-45°C) and reaction time (12-36 hour). At 34°C, POS achieved at the highest level which was approximately 31% after 12 hour of cooling process. The study of physiochemical properties of the CBE fat were done for characterization identification. The properties were solid fat content, slip melting point and iodine value. The Iodine Value (IV) and Slip Melting Point (SMP) are 44.30 and 29°C, respectively. Physicochemical characteristics of Cocoa butter Equivalent fractionated at 34°C (CBE34) fat proposed that it could be utilized in confectionery industry as CBE. Though the CBE produced was slightly softer compared to Cocoa Butter (CB), it fulfills the growing trend of softer chocolates that quickly dissolves in the mouth. The characteristics of the CBE produced, having high yield of POS contributed to the compatibility with CB. The thermo profile indicated that CBE34 fat melted below body temperature (37°C), which contributes to the fast melting in the mouth, leaving no waxy taste. According to European Union regulations, only 5% of CBE can be used in chocolate formulations, therefore, CBE34 will be easily blended with CB. The crystallization profile of CBE34 is (β'+β), which is similar to cocoa butter. Hence, from this study, CBE 34 is recommended for utilization in the confectionery industry as CBE