Development of a Red Mud-Epoxy Intumescent Coating for Steel Structures

The effect of red mud as filler in an intumescent coating with mixture of ammonium poly phosphate (APP), melamine (MEL), boric acid (BA), expandable graphite (EG), bisphenol A epoxy resin BE188 (BPA) and ACR hardener H-2319 was presented. Red mud is a waste product from Bayer process. It produces twice amount of red mud as waste compared to the alumina production. The amount of red mud was varied from 0 – 5 grams as to investigate the influence of red mud on the basic intumescent coating formulation on its fire retardant performance. The char expansion, residual weight of the intumescent coating and fire penetration test were executed. The coating went for furnace test at 500°C for 30 minutes as to analyze the char expansion and char structure. The optimum red mud amount as to get the largest char expansion was at 2 gram which is 3.69 times of the initial thickness. Fire test was conducted as to evaluate the heat penetration to the coated steel. The temperature of steel plate was recorded for 60 minutes at an interval of 1 minute. The results showed intumescent coating with red mud content protected steel at lower temperature compared to the constant formulation. With 2 gram of red mud, the coating successfully stabilized an impacting fire below 150°C for 60 minutes. The coating was characterized using thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) at 10°C/min under N2, over the whole range of temperature between 50-800°C. The red mud increased the residual weight by 1.86% at 1g of red mud while decreased the residual weight for 11.05% at 3g of red mud and constant residual weight produced as to compare to the constant IC formulation when 5g of red mud was used. Therefore, red mud influenced the performance of the basic intumescent coating on its fire retardant properties. Utilization of red mud as filler reduced the environmental pollution as well as contributing to the safety of the society

Takaful (Islamic insurance) benefit: ownership and distribution issues in Malaysia

This paper aims at investigating the ownership of the Takaful benefit and the issues of hibah in nomination. The focus is made solely on the Family takāful because this type of policy is singularly related to death. In this regard, the question is raised as whether the money paid by the takāful operator on the death of the participant (death benefit) before the policy matures constitutes the participant’s estate or not, and secondly over the validity of making a conditional hibah of that takaful policy to a nominee as a sole beneficiar

Pemindaan Perkara 9 perlembagaan Jepun dalam pentadbiran Shinzo Abe

Perlembagaan Jepun digubal oleh Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) pada Februari 1946. Perkara 9 dalam perlembagaan tersebut yang menghadkan kebebasan angkatan tentera Jepun menjadi isu besar sehingga terdapat desakan supaya dipinda, terutamanya oleh parti pemerintah iaitu Parti Liberal Demokratik (LDP). Perkara 9 didapati tidak lagi sesuai dengan persekitaran politik sekarang dan perkara ini dibangkitkan beberapa kali oleh Perdana Menteri, Shinzo Abe. Abe mengutamakan dua perkara dalam pentadbirannya, iaitu pertama, membangunkan semula ekonomi negara melalui “Abenomics” dan kedua menjadikan Jepun sebagai negara “normal” dengan meminda Perkara 9. Artikel ini membincangkan pemindaan Perkara 9 di bawah pentadbiran Shinzo Abe termasuk mengapa Perkara 9 perlembagaan Jepun perlu dipinda, usaha yang dilakukan Abe untuk merealisasikan pemindaan perlembagaan tersebut, maklum balas dari Amerika Syarikat, China dan Korea dan terakhir, sokongan rakyat Jepun sendiri. Analisis artikel ini mendapati bahawa Amerika Syarikat menyokong usaha “menormalkan” Jepun, tetapi tidak bagi China dan Korea. Walau bagaimanapun Abe perlu memberi tumpuan bagi mendapatkan persetujuan rakyat Jepun. Walaupun LDP mempunyai majoriti di kedua-dua dewan parlimen, tetapi referendum khas adalah menjadi halangan utama. Majoriti rakyat Jepun masih menentang rancangan beliau. Abe sepatutnya memahamkan rakyat terlebih dahulu mengenai rancangan beliau kerana ia melibatkan kehidupan seharian mereka

Development of a Red Mud-Epoxy Intumescent Coating for Steel Structures

The effect of red mud as filler in an intumescent coating with mixture of ammonium poly phosphate (APP), melamine (MEL), boric acid (BA), expandable graphite (EG), bisphenol A epoxy resin BE188 (BPA) and ACR hardener H-2319 was presented. Red mud is a waste product from Bayer process. It produces twice amount of red mud as waste compared to the alumina production. The amount of red mud was varied from 0 – 5 grams as to investigate the influence of red mud on the basic intumescent coating formulation on its fire retardant performance. The char expansion, residual weight of the intumescent coating and fire penetration test were executed. The coating went for furnace test at 500°C for 30 minutes as to analyze the char expansion and char structure. The optimum red mud amount as to get the largest char expansion was at 2 gram which is 3.69 times of the initial thickness. Fire test was conducted as to evaluate the heat penetration to the coated steel. The temperature of steel plate was recorded for 60 minutes at an interval of 1 minute. The results showed intumescent coating with red mud content protected steel at lower temperature compared to the constant formulation. With 2 gram of red mud, the coating successfully stabilized an impacting fire below 150°C for 60 minutes. The coating was characterized using thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) at 10°C/min under N2, over the whole range of temperature between 50-800°C. The red mud increased the residual weight by 1.86% at 1g of red mud while decreased the residual weight for 11.05% at 3g of red mud and constant residual weight produced as to compare to the constant IC formulation when 5g of red mud was used. Therefore, red mud influenced the performance of the basic intumescent coating on its fire retardant properties. Utilization of red mud as filler reduced the environmental pollution as well as contributing to the safety of the society

Thermal degradation of hemicellulose and cellulose in ball-milled cedar and beech wood

The thermal degradation reactivities of hemicellulose and cellulose in wood cell walls are significantly different from the thermal degradation behavior of the respective isolated components. Furthermore, the degradation of Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica, a softwood) is distinct from that of Japanese beech (Fagus crenata, a hardwood). Lignin and uronic acid are believed to play crucial roles in governing this behavior. In this study, the effects of ball milling for various durations of time on the degradation reactivities of cedar and beech woods were evaluated based on the recovery rates of hydrolyzable sugars from pyrolyzed wood samples. The applied ball-milling treatment cleaved the lignin ß-ether bonds and reduced the crystallinity of cellulose, as determined by X-ray diffraction. Both xylan and glucomannan degraded in a similar temperature range, although the isolated components exhibited different reactivities because of the catalytic effect of uronic acid bound to the xylose chains. These observations can be explained by the more homogeneous distribution of uronic acid in the matrix of cell walls as a result of ball milling. As observed for holocelluloses, cellulose in the ball-milled woods degraded in two temperature ranges (below 320 °C and above); a significant amount of cellulose degraded in the lower temperature range, which significantly changed the shapes of the thermogravimetric curves. This report compares the results obtained for cedar and beech woods, and discusses them in terms of the thermal degradation of the matrix and cellulose microfibrils in wood cell walls and role of lignin. Such information is crucial for understanding the pyrolysis and heat treatment of wood

Talent Development Practises at Higher Education Institutions in Malaysia during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case of a Public University in the Southern Region

Talent Development (TD) is important for every institution, including higher education. However, few institutions regard TD as one of their most crucial elements. During Covid-19, academics experienced stress and faced challenges when they had to alter their regular teaching and learning activities, such as switching to an online learning platform during the pandemic. This study, therefore, examined how the pandemic has affected TD practises in higher education institutions as human capital is the most important resource to an organisation. The research objective was to examine TD practises at a public Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Malaysia during the pandemic. This study employed a qualitative research methodology, namely phenomenological interviews, which enabled the researcher to capture the respondents’ actual experiences. In this study, two HR representatives and two academics from the same university participated as interviewees. Performance management, coaching, leadership development, and talent acquisition were themes that emerged from the interviews, along with several subthemes like hybrid, webinar courses, talent pool, and requirements. This study is significant in that it highlighted the value of TD practises in the higher education sector, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, as a guide for HEI administrators, this study helps in the revision of their existing strategies and understanding of the capacity gaps between the current academic skill level and the changing employment requirements to ultimately establish a coordinated TD

Dry Reforming of Methane Over Oil Palm Shell Activated Carbon and ZSM-5 Supported Cobalt Catalysts

In this study, cobalt supported oil palm shell activated carbon (Co/OPS-AC) and ZSM-5 zeolite (Co/ZSM-5) catalysts have been prepared for dry reforming of methane. Cobalt ratios of 6.0 and 14.0 wt% were deposited via wet impregnation method to the OPS-AC and ZSM-5 catalysts. The catalysts were characterized by XRD, N2 adsorption--desorption isotherms, BET surface area, SEM, FESEM-EDX, TPR-H2, and TPD-NH3. The dry reforming of methane was performed using a micro reactor system under the condition of 10,000 ml/h.g-cat, 3 atm, CH4/CO2 ratio of 1.2:1.0 and temperature range from 923 K to 1023 K. The gaseous products were analyzed by gas chromatography (GC) with thermal conductivity detector (TCD) and further quantified to determine the conversions of CH4 and CO2, and the yields of CO and H2. Experimental results revealed both catalysts exhibited lower conversions of CO2 and CH4 with the increase in temperature from 923 K to 1023 K. The reduced conversions may be due to the formation of carboneous substance on the catalyst known as coking. Comparatively, Co/OPS-AC gave higher conversions of CO2 and CH4 as well as higher yields of H2 and CO as it has a higher surface area than Co/ZSM-5 which subsequently rendered higher activity for the reforming of methane. With the increasing cobalt loadings and reaction temperature, OPS-AC(14) catalyst exhibited improved activity and H2/CO ratio. Based on these results, cobalt supported OPS activated carbon catalyst was suggested to be more effective for CO2 and CH4 conversions

Revised progressive morphological method for ground point classification of airborne LiDAR data

Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) has been very effectively used in collecting terrain information over different scales of area. Inevitably, filtering the non-ground returns is the major step of digital terrain model (DTM) generation and this step poses the greatest challenge especially for tropical forest environment which consists of steep undulating terrain and mostly covered by a relatively thick canopy density. The aim of this research is to assess the performance of the Progressive Morphological (PM) algorithm after the implementation of local slope value in the ground filtering process. The improvement on the PM filtering method was done by employing local slope values obtained either using initial filtering of airborne LiDAR data or ground survey data. The filtering process has been performed with recursive mode and it stops after the results of the filtering does not show any improvement and the DTM error larger than the previous iteration. The revised PM filtering method has decreasing pattern of DTM error with increasing filtering iterations with minimum ±0.520 m of RMSE value. The results also suggest that spatially distributed slope value applied in PM filtering algorithm either from LiDAR ground points or ground survey data is capable in preserving discontinuities of terrain and correctly remove non-terrain points especially in steep area

Preparation and characterization of impregnated magnetic particles on oil palm frond activated carbon for metal ions removal

The magnetic adsorbents i.e. oil palm frond-magnetic particles (OPF-MP) and oil palm frond activated carbon-magnetic particles (OPFAC-MP) have been prepared by impregnation of iron oxide via co-precipitation method. The magnetic adsorbents and their parent materials were characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Brunauer Emmett Teller (BET), Barrett, Joyner & Halenda (BJH) and t-plot method, x-ray diffraction (XRD) and also using vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) to study their properties and surface chemistry. The activated carbon magnetic adsorbent confers high surface area of 700 m2/g with amorphous structure and magnetic properties of 2.76 emu/g. The OPF-MP and OPFAC-MP were then applied in adsorption study for ions removal of Pb(II), Zn(II) and Cu(II). OPFAC-MP has shown high removal efficiency of 100 % with adsorption capacity up to 15 mg/g of Pb(II), Zn(II) and Cu(II) ions compared to OPF-MP. In addition, the magnetic adsorbents were also compared with their parent materials to observe the effect of magnetic particles. Accordingly, the impregnation of magnetic particles enhances the metal ions adsorption comparing to their parent materials

Optimization of levulinic acid from lignocellulosic biomass using a new hybrid catalyst

Conversion of glucose, empty fruit bunch (efb) and kenaf to levulinic acid over a new hybrid catalyst has been investigated in this study. The characterization and catalytic performance results revealed that the physico-chemical properties of the new hybrid catalyst comprised of chromium chloride and HY zeolite increased the levulinic acid production from glucose compared to the parent catalysts. Optimization of the glucose conversion process using two level full factorial designs (2 3) with two center points reported 55.2% of levulinic acid yield at 145.2°C, 146.7min and 12.0% of reaction temperature, reaction time and catalyst loading, respectively. Subsequently, the potential of efb and kenaf for producing levulinic acid at the optimum conditions was established after 53.2% and 66.1% of efficiencies were reported. The observation suggests that the hybrid catalyst has a potential to be used in biomass conversion to levulinic acid