Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

About: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia is a education organization based out in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Membrane & Adsorption. The organization has 21644 authors who have published 39500 publications receiving 520635 citations.

Coagulation and flocculation treatment of wastewater in textile industry using chitosan

Abstract: Aluminum sulfate (alum), ferrous sulfate, ferric chloride and ferric chloro-sulfate were commonly used as coagulants. However, a possible link of Alzheimer’s disease with conventional aluminium based coagulants has become an issue in wastewater treatment. Hence, special attention has shift towards using biodegradable polymer, chitosan in treatment, which are more environmental friendly. Moreover, chitosan is natural organic polyelectrolyte of high molecular weight and high charge density which obtained from deacetylation of chitin. Experiments were carried out on textile industry wastewater by varying the operating parameters, which are chitosan dosage, pH and mixing time in order to study their effect in flocculation process by using chitosan. The results obtained proved that chitosan had successfully flocculated the anionic suspended particles and reduce the levels of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and turbidity in textile industry wastewater. The optimum conditions for this study were at 30 mg/l of chitosan, pH 4 and 20 minutes of mixing time with 250 rpm of mixing rate for 1 minute, 30rpm of mixing rate for 20 minutes and 30 minutes of settling time. Moreover, chitosan showed the highest performance under these conditions with 72.5% of COD reduction and 94.9% of turbidity reduction. In conclusion, chitosan is an effective coagulant, which can reduce the level of COD and turbidity in textile industry wastewater

A review article: investigations on soft materials for soft robot manipulations

Abstract: In recent years, exploratory research on soft materials and their mechanism has been gaining in popularity. The investigations on soft materials are mostly done for two reasons: (a) to develop an anthropomorphic/prosthetic hand or soft hand with human skin-like material to perform soft manipulations and (b) to develop soft actuators. This paper presented a comprehensive investigation into researches on soft materials for robotic applications. The primary interest of using soft materials is not to leave any marks or damage to objects during the manipulation. The other advantage would be stable grasping due to an area contact. Natural rubber, synthetic rubber, elastomer, polymer composite and nanoparticulated polymer composite are some existing soft materials. Extensive research is required to prepare a high-strength but lighter soft material for robotic soft manipulation. Human skin and its mechanical properties are initially discussed. In addition, the need of soft material for soft manipulations and observations from previous researches over the past few decades, modelling of non-linear hyperelastic/viscoelastic materials and characterization are discussed. Finally, various soft materials including the polymer-matrix composites, available fillers and their advantages, processing methods and nanoparticulated polymer matrix and its significance in robotic application are presented.