BUKU ABSTRAK - Universiti Putra Malaysia

Hydroxamic Acid Grafted Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch Fibre for Heavy Metal
Removal
Prof. Dr. Md. Jelas Haron
Soleha M. Yusuff, Mariati Tiansih, Nor Azowa Ibrahim, Anuar Kassim and W.M.Z. Wan Yunus
Faculty of Science, University Putra Malaysia,
43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
+603-8946 6796; mdjelas@science.upm.edu.my
Keywords: Grafted, OPEFB, hydroxamic acid, heavy metal, removal
Fast ZeroX Algorithm for Routing in Optical Multistage Interconnection Networks
Prof. Dr. Mohamed Othman
Tengku Dian Shahida and Mohamad Khazani Abdullah
Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University Putra Malaysia,
43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
+603-8946 6556; mothman@fsktm.upm.edu.my
235
Science, Technology & Engineering
Most commercial ion exchanger resins for removal of heavy metals were petroleum-based polymers which
are neither renewable nor biodegradable. Biomass which is more biodegradable could thus be an alternative
and economical material. Oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) is a cheap biomass fiber available in Malaysia.
Therefore, the application of the fiber for value-added purposes such as in sorption of heavy metals is worth to be
explored. However, generally most native fibres have quite low functional groups for metal chelation. Hence, the
fiber has to be functionalised by appropriate chelating functional group before it can be used effectively to extract
heavy metals. In this research, the OPEFB was functionalised with hydroxamic acid which is known to form
complexes with various metal ions. The functionalised fibre was characterised and its sorption behaviour towards
heavy metals Cu(II), Fe(III), Cr(III) and Pb(II) from aqueous solution was evaluated. OPEFB was grafted with
polymethylacrylate (PMA) using H2O2/Fe2+ as initiator. The PMA grafted OPEFB (PMA-OPEFB) was treated
with hydroxylammonium chloride in alkaline medium to produce hydroxamic acid grafted fiber (PHA-OPEFB).
Sorption of the heavy metals by PHA-OPEFB is effective over a pH range of 4 - 6 and the sorption capacity much
higher compared to untreated fiber. The sorption follows the Langmuir model with maximum capacities higher
than some fibres reported by other researchers. The sorption process was exothermic as shown by the negative
value of enthalpy change, ?H?. The free energy change (?G?) for the sorption was negative showing that the
sorption process is spontaneous. A kinetic study showed that the metal sorption is fast and followed a second
order kinetic model.
Based on the ZeroX algorithm, a fast and efficient crosstalk-free time- domain algorithm called the
Fast ZeroX or shortly FastZ_X algorithm is proposed for solving optical crosstalk problem in optical Omega
multistage interconnection networks. A new pre-routing technique called the inverse Conflict Matrix (iCM) is also
introduced to map all possible conflicts identified between each node in the network as another representation of
the standard conflict matrix commonly used in previous Zero-based algorithms. It is shown that using the new
iCM, the original ZeroX algorithm is simplified, thus improved the algorithm by reducing the time to complete
routing process. Through simulation modelling, the new approach yields the best performance in terms of minimal
routing time in comparison to the original ZeroX algorithm as well as previous algorithms tested for comparison.
Keywords: Optical multistage interconnection networks (OMINs), optical omega networks, crosstalk-free routing algorithms,
zero-based algorithms