Mohd Halim Shah Ismail

Digital Image Processing of Palm Oil Fruits

The oil content of the flesh of mesocarp has direct relationship with color bands red, green and blue. By running intensive experiments, it was found that oil content correlated with the red color band, with a regression value of 0.86. The finding of this study may be useful for determining the ripeness of oil palm for harvesting and for the use in the operation and control of continuous steriliser in palm oil mill.

Recovery of palm oil and valuable material from oil palm empty fruit bunch by sub-critical water

Oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) is one of the solid wastes produced in huge volume by palm oil mill. Whilst it still contains valuable oil, approximately 22.6 million tons is generated annually and treated as solid waste. In this work, sub-critical water (sub-cw) was used to extract oil, sugar and tar from spikelet of EFB. The spikelet was treated with sub-cw between 180-280°C and a reaction time of 2 and 5 minutes. The highest yield of oil was 0.075 g-oil/g-dry EFB, obtained at 240°C and reaction time of 5 minutes. Astonishingly, oil that was extracted through this method was 84.5% of that obtained through Soxhlet method using hexane. Yield of oil extracted was strongly affected by the reaction temperature and time. Higher reaction temperature induces the dielectric constant of water towards the non-polar properties of solvent; thus increases the oil extraction capability. Meanwhile, the highest yield of sugar was 0.20 g-sugar/g-dry EFB obtained at 220°C. At this temperature, the ion product of water is high enough to enable maximum sub-critical water hydrolysis reaction. This study showed that oil and other valuable material can be recovered using water at sub-critical condition, and most attractive without the use of harmful organic solvent.

Optimization of accelerated water extraction for ginger bioactive compounds

This paper investigated the optimum recovery of ginger bioactive compounds (6-, 8-, 10-gingerols and 6-shogaol) based on semi-batch and batch systems in accelerated water extraction. The optimum is determined based on peak value i.e optimum recovery of batch system to semi-batch. The peak value of 6-, 8-, 10-gingerols and 6-shogaol are 64.6 %, 47.2 %, 30.6 % and 135.6%. 6-shogaol has the highest peak value with exceeding than 100% because of the β-hydroxyl in gingerols is dehydrated to form shogaol. The degradation rate, kdeg has good correlation in first order rate. The highest kdeg are found in 8-, and 10-gingerols.

Simulation of palm oil expression in screw press using computational fluid dynamics: Laying the foundation

In this manuscript, a systematic detail on the approaches and considerations for producing a Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation model of palm oil expression using screw press is presented. The behavior of oil palm fruitlet components (fiber, nut, and oil) during oil extraction process will be investigated for a deeper understanding on the process since manual observation is difficult as the screw press machine is an enclosed system. The simulation would provide information on the mixing behavior of heterogeneous oil palm mixture, and consequently the degree of its compaction due to the applied hydraulic force. This simulation project is expected to produce a flexible and robust trial system to replace an expensive and time-consuming experimental runs.

Removal of Boron and Arsenic From Petrochemical Wastewater Using Zeolite as Adsorbent

Petrochemical wastewater is one of the major industrial concerns due to the toxicity of heavy metals such as boron and arsenic. These metals must be progressively treated before discharged into receiving water. In this research, adsorption of boron and arsenic was conducted using natural zeolite (clinoptilolite). The arsenic and boron removal efficiencies using natural zeolite as adsorbents are 66 and 52 %, respectively, at its optimum conditions (pH 8, contact time 240 min and adsorbent dosage 480 g/L). Compared to various adsorbents, the adsorption using natural zeolite showed excellent boron and arsenic removal, thus has a great potential to be applied in industrial wastewater treatment plant.

Methylene Blue Removal from Aqueous Solution by Hylocereus undatus (Dragon Fruit) Foliage

Dragon fruit foliage in its natural form was applied for decolorization of methyleneblue,a cationic dye from aqueous solution. The effects of major parameters like initial dye concentration, pH, adsorbent dose, temperature and contact time were investigated in batch experimental set-up. The optimum values for removal of methylene blue were identified to be pH 9.0 with 30 hours contact time using 1.2 g L−1biosorbent dosage at 250mg L−1 initial dye concentration. The present results suggested that foliage of dragon fruit can be a potential agricultural byproduct to be used as an environmental friendly and low cost biosorbent.

Effect of crude palm oil as plasticiser on the mechanical and morphology properties of low density polyethylene blown film

This paper presents a study on the mechanical and morphology properties of low density polyethylene (LDPE) blown film modified with crude palm oil (CPO). The effect of the crude palm oil as plasticiser on LDPE matrix has been studied. The LDPE were compounded with 1%, 3% and 5% of crude palm oil in a co-rotating twin screw extruder and pelletised. The blends were processed using blow thin film machine. The results on tensile properties were showed the gradual enhanced the elongation at break about 79% to 90% in machine direction (MD) and transverse direction (TD) and gradually decreased the tensile strength about 9%. The rupture properties of LDPE modified with CPO showed the decrement pattern due to the plastisticisation effect. The fracture mechanism of modified LDPE was also investigated from scanning electron microscope micrographs which clearly indicated the orientation strengthening consistently with the result in mechanical properties. From Fourier transmission infra-red (FTIR) spectras, the presence of CPO showed