Carbon emission reduction targeting through process integration and fuel switching with mathematical modeling

Carbon emission reduction targeting is an important and effective effort for industry to contribute in controlling greenhouse gases concentration in atmosphere. Graphical approach has been proposed for CO2 emissions reduction targeting via HEN retrofit and fuel switching. However, it involves potentially time consuming manual procedures and the quality of solutions produced greatly depends on designer's experience and judgment. Besides, graphical approach hardly account for the cost factor during the design phase, thus potentially generate complex design. This paper introduces an MINLP model for simultaneous CO2 emissions reduction targeting via fuel switching and HEN retrofit. A sequential model execution was proposed along with the proposed model. The application of the model on a crude preheat train case study has demonstrated its workability to generate optimal solution for targeted CO2 emissions reduction at minimum payback period

The necessity of laboratory analyses to verify the authenticity of halal products

The concern of food safety, authenticity and adulteration has resulted in increased awareness regarding the composition of food products. The identity and source of the ingredients in processed or composite mixtures is not always readily visible. Most frequently, pork meat and its bi-products have been used to substitute other ingredients in food products. Hence, verification that the components are authentic and from sources acceptable to Muslim consumers are indeed essential. Sensitive and reliable methods for detection of halal products adulteration are of paramount important for implementation of halal food labelling, regulations and products quality control. Various techniques have been proposed for the analysis of pork, lard, khamr and gelatine including DNA-based methods, gas chromatography, liquid chromatography, differential scanning calorimetric and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Some of the techniques were validated and accredited with MS 17025 to potentially complement the existing verification and monitoring mechanisms for halal products certification

Isolation and Characterisation of Bifidobacterium Spp. from Infant Stools

Infant faecal materials from different feeding regimes (breast fed, breast fed supplemented with mixed diet and bottle fed) were analysed for their distribution of microbes and isolation of bifidobacteria. The predominant bacteria in breast-fed infants after 23 weeks were streptococci and bifidobacteria. The predominant bacteria in breast-fed supplemented with mixed diet after 24 weeks were clostridia, streptococci and bifidobacteria. In the bottle fed infant faeces, bifidobacteria was present in small numbers whereas lactobacilli were one of the most predominant bacteria. 18 isolates of Bifidobacterium in/antis and 10 isolates of Bifidobacterium breve were isolated and tested for their antibacterial activity, survival in low pH conditions, and adhesion to human colon carcinoma cell lines . Three isolates (B. in/antisC040225, B. breve F0526100 and B. breve G012048) exhibited good antibacterial activity. These isolates inhibit the growth of Salmonella enteritidis, Vibrio cholera, Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Pseudomonas aerugmosa and Listeria monocytogenes. The survival rate of bifidobacteria in low pH condition was variable among isolates. All the isolates tested showed good survival in control solution (pH 6.5). None of the isolates tested was able to survive at pH 1.0 after 1 hour incubation. However, at pH 2.0, five isolates (B. infantis D042022, B. infantis F042466, B. infantis F0526100 and B. infantis G001204) survived after 1h incubation but not after 2h incubation at this pH. Four strains (B. infantis D04 2022, B. infantis F0606117, B. infantis F041134 and B. infantis Z040845) possessed good survival at pH 3.0 where viable cells could still be detected after 3 hours incubation. One of the most important criteria of probiotic micro-organism is the ability to adhere and colonise to human intestinal epithelial cells in order to prevent them from being flushed out by the peristaltic movement in the gastrointestinal tract. B. infantis G001204 was found to adhere well to HT29 cell lines in culture. Not all the bifidobacteria isolates tested possessed all the characteristics of probiotic

Metal concentrations in Sungai Sedili Kecil, Johor, Peninsular Malaysia

Water and sediment from five sampling stations in Sungai Sedili Kecil were sampled in October 2010 and analyzed for 11 metals including cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), lead (Pb), aluminium (Al), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co), arsenic (As) and argentum (Ar). Results showed that the mean dissolved metal concentrations (in μg/L) in Sungai Sedili waters based on 5 sampling stations (in descending order) for Fe, Al, Zn, Cu, As, Mn, Ni, Pb, Co, Cd and Ag were 443.7, 52.7, 50.2, 34.2, 25.9, 20.3, 6.8, 1.4, 0.77, 0.67 and 0.10 μg/L, respectively. Mean metal concentrations (in μg/g dry weight) for sediments (in descending order) for Fe, Al, Mn, Zn, Pb, Cu, As, Ni, Co, Cd and Ag were 33389.4, 17118.7, 190.5, 55.1, 29.1, 26.3, 19.3, 10.9, 4.7, 0.18 and 0.12 μg/g, respectively. A comparison with various water and sediment quality standards showed that the mean metal concentrations in surface water and sediment of Sungai Sedili Kecil were low and within the range of natural background except for Cu and Fe in water

Species Classification and Molecular Studies of Bile Salt Hydrolase (BSH) Gene in Bifidobacterium Spp

Molecular methods were used to identify and characterise Bifidobacterium isolated from the faeces of breast-fed infants. A Bifidobacterium genus-specific primers based on the V9 variable region of the 168 rDNA was used to identify Bifidobacterium isolates and to distinguish them from other genera. All the Bifidobacterium species tested generated PCR product with the size of approximately 1.35 kb, whereas other genera showed no band with these primers. Furthermore, a sequence analysis of 168 rRNA gene of Bifidobacterium isolates revealed high homology (98% and above) with Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum JCM1200. This result indicates that the 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis is a useful and accurate tool for the identification of the genus Bifidobacterium In addition, a set of B. pseudocatenulatum species-specific primer was used as an alternative to identify the species of B. psedocatenulatum using PCR technique. It was found that this set of primer was able to generate PCR product with the size of approximately 278 bp in all the B. pseudocatenulatum isolates as well as the type strain of B. pseudocatenulatum JCM1200. Other species of bifidobacteria gave no band. A protocol for the rapid fingerprinting technique of Bifidobacterium strains and other pro biotic microorganisms based on randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) has been developed. Three 10-mer primers (GEN1-60-03, GEN1-60-06 and GEN1-60-07) used generated RAPD patterns with DNA fragments ranging from approximately 0.3 kb to 10.0 kb in size. Examination of the DNA fingerprints using cluster analysis showed a significant genetic diversity among the strains tested. Another fingerprinting technique based on the distribution of dispersed repetitive DNA [enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) and repetitive extragenic palindromic (REP)] segments in the genome of Bifidobacterium and other pro biotic bacteria was also examined for the first time using primers derived from the REP and ERIC sequences and PCR. The patterns of the resulting PCR products were analysed on agarose gel and were found to be highly specific for each species. All the B. pseudocatenulatum isolates and B. pseudocatenulatum JCM 1200 type strain presented an approximately 1.5 kb fragment by ERIC and a 800 bp fragment by REP. These two fragments were not detectable in other species of bifidobacteria. This study demonstrates the presence of ERIC and REP-like elements in the genome of bifidobacteria and other probiotic bacteria. PCR technique was also used to detect the presence of bsh gene in Bifidobacterium longum B8536. In this regards, a pair of PCR primers for the rapid detection of bsh gene from B. longum have been synthesised and have revealed the bsh gene of appoximately 970 bp. The bsh gene was cloned and sequenced showing a high homology to bsh gene previously published. The resulting nucleotide sequence encodes a predicted protein of 317 amino acids with a molecular weight of approximately 35 kDa. The bsh gene from B. longum was also cloned and expressed in E. coli BL21-S1 using pRSET -A expression vector. The expressed protein was detected using immunoblot assay

INTEGRATED PRODUCTION FOR OIL REFINERIES AND PETROCHEMICAL PLANTS

In an increasingly globalised commodity market and under continually changing economic scenarios, oil, gas and petrochemical plants are forced to improve their operation practices in order to remain competitive. One strategy that can be adopted is to exploit the synergy between oil refineries and petrochemical plants through the strategy of integrated production. In this work, issues of integrated production strategy with respect to profitability, implementation and flexibility are explored. Profitability is the key motivation for any plant to change its operation practices. Three options for the strategy of integrated production are considered: integration of final products, integration of intermediate products, and integration of processing units. Decisions are made on the allocation of material resources, the distribution of products and the operating conditions of process units. These decisions are optimised for maximum profit while satisfying all production constraints. In the integrated production of an oil refinery and a petrochemical plant, propylene, naphtha, gasoil and pygas are selected for integration. The benefits of the integrated production strategy are lower costs and higher profits to the integrated plants. Systematic implementation of integrated production strategy is carried out by evaluating the necessary condition and generating an interaction model to bridge information flow between the two plants. Sensitivity analysis is used to evaluate the necessary condition for integrated production. The interaction model regulates the required information !low between the two plants and screens for options of integrated production network. Flexibility of integrated production plan is studied by varying demands and prices of exchanged materials. For an integrated production plant to be flexible, it has to remain feasible even when these parameters change. Flexibility analysis allows steps to be carried out at an early stage to ensure feasibility of the integrated production plan. All integrated production planning problems are formulated as nonlinear programming problem (NLP) and solved using the modular sequential optimisation approach. Case studies are performed to demonstrate how the three issues are addressed

Asynchronous point to point FSK- FM radio telemetry system with data encryption for monitoring environmental conditions / Shuhaimi Shamsuddin

Telemetry systems are an important part of communication and control technologies in today's applications such as in military, medical and environmental sciences. One of its main tasks is to acquire data at a remote location and send the data to a location either through cables or radio waves where the data can be received for analysis. The main objective of this research is to study and develop a ciphered Frequency Shift Keying - Frequency Modulation (FSK-FM) radio telemetry system for monitoring environmental conditions. The system comprises of a remote telemetry station (RTS) as a data collection center and a base telemetry station (BTS) as a data evaluation center. A software programming based on LabVIEW was developed for data processing and presentation. The data collected at RTS site are encrypted prior to transmission to the BTS by employing the One Time Pad (OTP) and Caesar Cipher algorithms. Serial asynchronous transmission was used as data communication protocol via RS232 port. Free Space Propagation, Two Ray Ground Reflection and JTC models were used to predict and compare the received power of the telemetry system. The developed telemetry system is 99 .35% accurate compared to Free Space model. The performance of the developed telemetry system is also successfully evaluated in the laboratory and field for 1000m range. The results of the evaluation show that there is no bit error during 300 and 600 bps data rates and the average SNR is 26.07 dB. The accuracy of data integrity is determined to be at 99.9945%

Non-muslim citizenship in Islamic law: juristic polemics and Malaysian reality

The status of non-Muslim minorities in a Muslim nation in present day societies is a contested issue in modern Islamic law. Most of Muslim legists advance the view that non-Muslim minorities cannot enjoy equal rights with Muslims as they are dhimmis. Another group arguing for equal rights, however, maintains that today`s Muslim nation states are totally new political structures to which much of the traditional aspects of classical Islamic law including the notion of dimmah does not apply. This study attempts to show that the traditional concept of dhimmi still somewhat defines the position of non-Muslim minorities in the thinking of the legal scholars. Nevertheless, on critical and fundamental issues of rights, non-Muslims in Malaysia enjoy much greater rights which their counterparts in Muslim majority countries never dreamt of during pre-modern times

Development of Online Teaching Outcome Evaluation System

Online Teaching Outcome Evaluation System is developed to support Outcome Based Education (OBE) evaluation system using online evaluation system. This system is aimed to give added value in supporting the implementation ofOBE system in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP). This system is aimed to provide lecturers with features that will enable them to evaluate students rapidly to enable lecturer to encounter if there is any major low understanding among majority students. This system will be using Visual Basic .NET and ASP .NET to develop this online evaluation system

Malaysia and the Law of the Sea

The new legal regime of the oceans has brought many changes in the Malacca Strait. The most recent one in the enactment of the Malaysian Exclusive Economic Zone Act 1984 as corollary to its proclamation on the Exclusive Economic Zone in 1980. A year later, the Fisheries Act 1985 was enacted by Malaysia as a result of increasing needs to address new issues in fisheries protection and management in the Malaysian fisheries waters. The conclusion of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, among other things, has improvised the concept of transit passage in the straits used for international navigation between one part of the high seas or an exclusive economic zone and another part of the high seas or an exclusive economic zone. From the geographical and legal criteria, the Malacca Strait falls under such regime but the relevant legislation enacted by Malaysia at certain points seem to exceed the Convention with regard to marine pollution control, the rights of foreign fishing vessels navigating in the Strait and enforcement measures. The conflicting provisions contained in both the Exclusive Economic Zone Act of 1984 and the Fisheries Act 1985 in comparison with the object and intent of the UNCLOS III are to be amended where necessary and its applicability rectified in the Strait. Such actions are shown not only to result in conformity with the UNCLOS III, but to benefit Malaysia in its effort to protect the resources in the Strait