Curtin Sarawak Technical Debate and Process Plant Design Teams Win National Level Championship

Miri – 14 December 2015 – Curtin Sarawak teams have drummed out an emphatic presence in the National Chemical Engineering Symposium (NACES) 2015 after emerging champion in two categories, technical debate and process plant design competition in Curtin University, Sarawak Malaysia (Curtin Sarawak). This year, Curtin Sarawak played host with the theme ‘Tug of War: Fossil Fuels against Renewables’ and it was held from 4-6 December. This event was organised by Curtin Sarawak’s Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) Student Chapter in collaboration with the university’s Department of Chemical Engineering and the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) in Malaysia.

The championship technical debate team consists of Nguyen Quang Minh, Joel Tong Khai Yeong and Mohammad Shehryaar Khan. They received an award with a cash prize of RM 900. It is the first time for Curtin Sarawak to emerge as champion for this category. The first and second runner-up for this category goes to Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) respectively.

Meanwhile, the second winning from Curtin Sarawak is from the process plant design team. The team consists of final year chemical engineering students, Sam Tze Mun, Lee Ren Jie, Sheron Lim Gek Joo, Lim Shih Chiang, and Irene Mong. They received an award with a cash prize of RM 1,300. Their plant design entitled ‘Enhancement of Syngas Production using Agri-Waste Technology’ which utilised the feedstock mixtures of sub-bituminuous coal and rice husk to produce high hydrogen yield in the synthetic gas (syngas) from the gasification process which involved a circulating fluidised bed gasifier, heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) and desulphurisation using absorbent technologies in the system captured the attention of the industrial judges. University of Malaya (UM) emerged as the first runner up followed by UTP as the second runner up in the process plant design.

Furthermore, Curtin Sarawak technical power point presentation team consists of Arsalan Ahmad, Katria Aren Youngblood, Loo Wei Chuan and Edwin Kuan Chow Fui made it to the final stage.

A total of five teams represented Curtin Sarawak for this symposium. The teams participated in four different categories which are technical debate, chemical engineering challenge, technical power point presentation, and process plant design. The technical debate, chemical engineering challenge and technical power point presentation teams are under the guidance of Dr Bridgid Chin Lai Fui. Meanwhile, the process plant design team are supervised by Dr Jibrail Kansedo and Dr Bridgid Chin, both lecturers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Curtin Sarawak’s Faculty of Engineering and Science.

NACES is a yearly national level event which serves as a distinguished platform for chemical engineering undergraduates to showcase their creative thinking, effective communication and technical knowledge in creating innovative solutions to global development, issues and challenges. This also provides networking opportunities among the chemical engineering undergraduates from different universities participating for this event. This symposium consists of seven technical sessions – Technical Essay Writing, Technical Case Study, Technical Power Point Presentation, Technical Debate Competition, Technical Video Presentation, Chemical Engineering Challenge, and Process Plant Design.

For more information on Curtin Sarawak, visit its website (www.curtin.edu.my), its Facebook page (Curtin University Sarawak Malaysia), Twitter profile (curtinsarawak), YouTube channel (CurtinUniSarawak) or Instagram (curtinsarawak).

Process plant design team showcased their prototype model accompanying by the academic advisors, Dr Bridgid Chin and Dr Jibrail Kansedo.

Group photo of the winning teams after receiving their mock cheques.