Mohd Shahbudin Masdar

Development of Conceptual Design Model of Direct Methanol Fuel Cell for a Portable Application

This paper presents development of conceptual design model of DMFC for a portable application. The target power for the design is 0.4 watt per single cell, with 4 cm 2 active area. The current density and fuel cell voltage were fixed to 0.175 A/cm 2 and 0.57 V respectively. In order to develop new design, mass and heat transport will be analysed to get a better performance in the system. The new design will be applied to the portable applications such as cellphone, laptops and etc.

Kajian awal ke atas mangkin berasaskan pd disokong dengan gentian nano karbon untuk pengoksidaan elektro gliserol

In this study, Aurum (Au) was used as the second metal in palladium catalyst (Pd) and carbon nanofiber (CNF) as catalyst support for glycerol oxidation. Second metal and catalyst support will help to improve catalytic activity and decrease adsorbed oxidation intermediates species. Carbon nanofiber supported PdAu nanoparticles was synthesized by using trisodium citrate as stabilizing agent and sodium borohydride as reducing agent. Physicochemical characterizations of the catalyst were performed by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) to study the nature of the catalysts. The electrochemical activity for oxidation of glycerol on PdAu/CNF was evaluated in half cell under alkaline media by cyclic voltammetry potentiostat. The densities and mass activity obtained from half-cell analysis were 73.81 mA cm-2 @ 492.04 mA mg-1, 63.82 mA cm-2 @ 425.44 mA mg-1 and 55.73 mA cm-2 @ 371.54 mA mg-1 for PdAu/CNF, Pd/CNF and Au/CNF, respectively in 1 M KOH + 0.5 M glycerol electrolyte. The electrochemical study, exhibited the superior performance of bimetallic PdAu/CNF catalyst as compared to monometallic Pd/CNF. This indicate that the electronic coupling between Pd and Au can promote the electrocatalytic activity for glycerol oxidation.

Mathematical modelling and simulation on the adsorption of Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) gas

Hydrogen sulfide, H2S, a pollutant in biofuel gas, i.e., biohydrogen and biomethane, is produced at concentrations ranging from 100 ppm to 10,000 ppm and is recommended to be removed at the early stage of gas purification because it is known as a problematic compound. In this study, adsorption technologies show a promising technique to remove H2S from biofuel gas, which mainly depends on the operating parameters and adsorbent ability. In this study, the development of the models is important to investigate the fundamentals of H2S adsorption mechanism. The fitted mathematics model was performed by considering several assumptions made for fixed-bed adsorption, leading to the determination of the breakthrough curve by solving a set of partial differential equations (PDEs). The operating parameters were as follows: varied inlet concentration at 1000 ppm to 10,000 ppm, flow rate at 0.2 L/min to 0.6 L/min, length bed used at 10 cm to 30 cm, and pressure at 1.5 atm to 5 atm. The adsorption performance was also studied by using commercial activated carbon such as palm kernel shell (PKS-AC), coconut shell activated carbon (coconut shell-AC), and zeolite ZSM-5. To support the effectiveness of the mathematical models, the adsorption test was performed by loading the adsorbent into the fixed-bed adsorption column at an overall diameter of 6 cm and height of 30 cm. The system operated under room temperature, H2S inlet concentration of 1000 ppm, and varying flow rate as in the modelling for PKS-AC. As a result, in the modelling study, the inlet concentration effect was highest in adsorption capacity, breakthrough time, and exhaustion time. However, the increase of flow rate and length bed used only affected the breakthrough and exhaustion times but not adsorption capacity. The total pressure used did not affect adsorption performance. Coconut shell-AC shows longer exhaustion time compared with other adsorbents due to the less frequent changes of adsorbent. In the experimental study, the 1000 ppm inlet concentration shows the highest flow rate effect on the adsorption performance, which, at 0.2 L/min, took almost 23 h to achieve 30 ppm compared with 0.6 L/min, which only took 13 min to exhaust the same outlet concentration. Hence, the adsorption system with the right choice of operational parameters, adsorbent, and fitted mathematical models can optimize the adsorption efficiency, adsorption capacity, breakthrough time, and exhaustion time.

Engineering Analysis in Co-Curricular Student Program of Chem E Car

Chem-E-Car is a group co-curricular activity among students in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering in the form of a competition. This activity gives students an opportunity to design and construct a mini vehicle powered by chemical energy source, i.e. chemical reaction, which will carry a specified load over a given distance. The competition also gives students the opportunity to practice their chemical engineering knowledge during class session. In this competition, the analysis of chemical reaction engineering is required to predict the movement of the car with a certain distance to carry the specific load of water volume. Generally, the competition is divided in two main categories such as poster presentations and car performance. For the poster presentation category, judges will evaluate mainly on soft skills either in individually or group. This paper focuses on the category of design and car performance including the car concept, implementation and chemical reaction mechanisms used in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) level. In order to achieve a good car performance, an engineering analysis will help the group in determining the impact of car design and reaction mechanisms as the power source to move the car at a specific target.