UMS wins innovation award, helps solve clean water, electricity shortage issues

 By Olivia Miwil - October 5, 2021 @ 2:56pm

Universiti Malaysia Sabah Chemical Engineering Professor Dr Rosalam Sarbatly (third right) and his team won the innovation award that could solve water and electricity shortage issues. - Pict courtesy of UMS.

KOTA KINABALU: Universiti Malaysia Sabah's (UMS) award-winning innovation will help to solve clean water and electricity shortages in the rural coast regions.

UMS engineering faculty's Prof Dr Rosalam Sarbatly said the pilot research was known as Water and Energy Production using Membrane Distillation and Osmotic Membrane Distillation (MD-OMD) system.

He said the system used hydrophobic nanofiber membranes to simultaneously produce clean water and energy by utilising seawater and solar power.

"It enables electricity production and up to 18,512 litres of water per day to around 20 of the 500 residents and 25 staff in a small rural resort.

"This patented system of integrated MD-OMD for desalination allows safe and clean drinking water.

"Without the need to depend on arguably more fresh water and alternative energy resources outside of the village, the project is to solve clean water issues and electricity shortages in rural coastal regions, especially during seasons of drought," he said in a statement.

The system has won the Sustainability Award in Institution of Chemical Engineers' (IChemE) Malaysia Awards 2021.

Rosalam thanked IChemE for the opportunity to share technology with both the industries and scientific community for further research collaboration and commercialisation.

"In today's era in transition from zero scale civilisation to scale one, technological development is no longer about new scientific discoveries, but more about solving engineering problems to ensure their solutions are practical, sustainable and competitive.

"I hope the recognition of engineering innovation intensifies to promote solutions to engineering problems," he said.

There were six awards presented during the ninth IChemE Malaysia Awards 2021, which was held virtually on Oct 1.

Young Researcher Award went to How Bing Shen from Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus; Student Chapter Award (University of Nottingham Malaysia), and Oil and Gas Award won by Petronas Penapisan (Terengganu) 's visual gas sampling points (VGSP).

Another two awards were won by Petronas Digital (Training and Development Award) and Asean Bintulu Fertilizer (Process Safety Award).