Renewable Energy Production from Municipal Solid Waste to Mitigate Climate Change: A Spatially Explicit Assessment for Malaysia

The utilization of municipal solid waste (MSW) as a renewable resource could overcome waste disposal issues, generate power for fossil fuel displacement, and mitigate CO2 emissions from landfill. However, the availability of waste feedstock varies with the effectiveness of waste management while the profitability and the environmental impact are mostly dependent on the conversion technology, plant location, and plant capacity. This study aims to evaluate the complexity of waste-to-energy (WTE) supply chain networks for energy production and the CO2 mitigation potential through a spatially explicit approach. The Malaysian peninsular is selected as a case study area. This study adapted the IIASA techno-economic engineering model for optimizing renewable energy systems (BeWhere) and developed a WTE optimization component. The model minimizes the full supply chain cost of WTE, optimizes the capacity and location of WTE production plants, and assesses the energy and by-product potentials. Several scenarios were designed to analyze the impact of energy and carbon mitigation potential of WTE with varying the fossil fuel prices or carbon tax in the supply chain. The results show that incineration and hydrothermal for power production are the preferred options, primarily because of the low economic investment and the high energy conversion efficiency. Apart from the power as the main product, the system produces biofuel as by-product. It is found that most of the plants are installed in more highly populated cities with large potential for waste biomass, hence reducing logistical costs and emissions from transportation. The preliminary results show that WTE could be substituted for about 9% of the Malaysian power production following a business-as-usual scenario. The study proved that BeWhere for MSW provides a robust spatial explicit solution for WTE with assessment of the energy production and CO2 mitigation potential

Accreditation Engineering Scenario and Future of Engineering Education in Malaysia

Engineering education in Malaysia is a strong and vibrant enterprise. Malaysia government is projecting to produce 222,000 engineering graduates in the next 9 years. This number of engineers is needed to ensure the development industries, infrastructures and general well-being of Malaysia are carried out as planned. However, since Malaysia has engineers in various fields, engineers have provided the driving forces behind high technology services and products to enhance the Malaysia economy growth locally and internationally. It is also cited that there are 33 accredited engineering programmes in Malaysia universities and colleges. Engineering degree is the common degree entry to the engineering profession nowadays, such as civil engineering, electrical engineering, electronics engineering and mechanical engineering. The Malaysia engineering degree requires a completion of four years full time study. For an engineering degree programme to be recognize, all the engineering degrees in Malaysia are governed by Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC). EAC ensure all the engineering degree programmes that are offered by Malaysian universities are subjected to the minimum academic requirements for registration as a graduate engineer with the Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM). BEM is representing Malaysia in Washington Accord since 2009, engineering education in Malaysia took on a broader international aspect and agreed to achieve equivalent standard with the other 14 signatories’ countries. Due to the upcoming challenges of the future, it is ideated that Malaysia engineers must progress working hard with all the necessary technical competencies in engineering science. This role is very important so that they will be flexible enough to be involved in multidisciplinary engineering tasks in Malaysia and around the world. Globalization is a trend that affects humanities, cultures, traditions and history of a country. Globalisation is defined as “the flow of people, culture, ideas, values, knowledge, technology, and economy across borders facilitating a more interconnected and interdependent world”. Engineering graduates are facing fierce challenges and competition not only locally but also internationally. Due to the global challenges and competition, local engineering graduates need to equip themselves with flexibility, ethics, professionalism, knowledge and skill in facing the global challenges. Government, educational institutions and industry plays an important role to upgrade the quality of local engineering education. The modern engineering profession deals constantly with uncertainty, incomplete data and competing (often conflicting) demands from clients, governments, environmental groups and the public. It requires technical competent and professionalism skill, as well as to be exposed to the global scenarios, current trend and future requirements. Whilst trying to incorporate more “humanity” skill into their knowledge base and professional practice, today’s engineers must also cope with continual technological and organizational changes in the workplace. In addition they must cope with the commercial realities of industrial practice in the modern world, as well as the legal consequences of every professional decision they make. The challenge for engineering education in Malaysia is to improve the current engineering education system so that the Malaysia engineering graduates are recognized internationally. Nevertheless, engineering education in Malaysia is constantly reviewed together with the professional members from the industries and education departmental. This study is expected to provide the current scenario of engineering education which later will foresee effect and the future design of accreditated engineering curriculum in Malaysia. This aim of this paper is to describe the modelled current scenario of accreditated engineering education and the accreditation process on future engineering education in Malaysia

The Sustainable Technological Innovation among SMEs in South East Asia Countries: A Case Study

South East Asia (SEA) region is characterized by economies of vast disparities in natural resources, capabilities and development levels. Key issues for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in globalizing economies in the region continue to financing, marketing, technology, human resource and external environment including policy framework. SMEs are currently going through a transition phase and process of restructuring for competitive growth, in the fast technological changes, among other factors. The increasing influx of transnational corporations (TNCs) and foreign direct investment (FDI) in manufacturing and services in the region have opened up large business opportunities and also threats, needing more advanced technological inputs, and absorptive and innovative capabilities for enhancing and efficiency of SMEs. This paper describes the technological innovation, provide information, and discuss the technological innovation issues in selected SEA countries

Transmission performance improvement using random DFB laser based Raman amplification and bidirectional second-order pumping

We demonstrate that a distributed Raman amplification scheme based on random distributed feedback (DFB) fiber laser enables bidirectional second-order Raman pumping without increasing relative intensity noise (RIN) of the signal. This extends the reach of 10 × 116 Gb/s DP-QPSK WDM transmission up to 7915 km, compared with conventional Raman amplification schemes. Moreover, this scheme gives the longest maximum transmission distance among all the Raman amplification schemes presented in this paper, whilst maintaining relatively uniform and symmetric signal power distribution, and is also adjustable in order to be highly compatible with different nonlinearity compensation techniques, including mid-link optical phase conjugation (OPC) and nonlinear Fourier transform (NFT)

Optimal Biomethane Injection into Natural Gas Grid – Biogas from Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) in Malaysia

The Malaysian government aims to facilitate the renewable energy (RE) sector by introducing the National Renewable Energy Policy and Action Plan during 2010. 4,000 MW of installed RE capacity is targeted by 2030, with 410 MW biogas capacity. Palm oil mill effluent (POME), agro-based industries and farming industries are identified as potential sources of biogas. It was studied that more than 500 kt of biomethane could be produced yearly if all the POME is treated anaerobically. The utilization of biomethane has remained unexplored for its injection into natural gas grid. This papers aims to identify the potential of POME biomethane injection into natural gas grid by using the BeWhere model, a techno-economic spatial explicit model. The locations, capacity and technology of biogas refinery plants will be identified based on cost minimization of the full supply chain of biogas production. The result shows that 135 - 227 biogas plants were selected, supplying 40% - 67% residential fossil gas demand, under different carbon price implementation and fossil gas subsidy scenarios

High-quality InP/ZnS nanocrystals with high photometric performance and their application to white quantum dot light-emitting diodes

Full visible range covering InP/ZnS core-shell nanocrystals with high photometric performance have been prepared. Making use of these nanocrystals, we demonstrate a white quantum dot LED with a high color rendering index of 91. © 2012 IEEE

Tripeptidase Gene (pepT) of Lactococcus lactis:Molecular Cloning and Nucleotide Sequencing of pepT and Construction of a Chromosomal Deletion Mutant

The gene encoding a tripeptidase (pepT) of lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris (formerly subsp. lactis) MG1363 was cloned from a genomic library in pUC19 and subsequently sequenced. The tripeptidase of L. lactis was shown to be homologous to PepT of Salmonella typhimurium with 47.4% identity in the deduced amino acid sequences. L. lactis PepT was enzymatically active in Escherichia coli and allowed growth of a peptidase-negative leucine-auxotrophic E. coli strain by liberation of Leu from a tripeptide. Using a two-step integration excision system, a pepT-negative mutant of L. lactis was constructed. No differences between the growth of the mutant and that of the wild-type strain in milk or in chemically defined medium with casein as the sole source of essential amino acids were observed.</p

A general T-matrix approach applied to two-body and three-body problems in cold atomic gases

We propose a systematic T-matrix approach to solve few-body problems with s-wave contact interactions in ultracold atomic gases. The problem is generally reduced to a matrix equation expanded by a set of orthogonal molecular states, describing external center-of-mass motions of pairs of interacting particles; while each matrix element is guaranteed to be finite by a proper renormalization for internal relative motions. This approach is able to incorporate various scattering problems and the calculations of related physical quantities in a single framework, and also provides a physically transparent way to understand the mechanism of resonance scattering. For applications, we study two-body effective scattering in 2D-3D mixed dimensions, where the resonance position and width are determined with high precision from only a few number of matrix elements. We also study three fermions in a (rotating) harmonic trap, where exotic scattering properties in terms of mass ratios and angular momenta are uniquely identified in the framework of T-matrix.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure