It was a day of double joy for two research teams from UTAR Faculty of Engineering and Green Technology (FEGT) to win a gold and silver medal respectively at the National Innovation and Invention Competition through Exhibition (iCompEx’17) held at the Politeknik Sultan Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah (POLIMAS), Jitra, Kedah from 21 to 23 March 2017.

Organised by POLIMAS, the event saw the FEGT teams win in the category of Agriculture, Environment and Renewable Energy, also Electrical and Electronic. Both teams presented their winning inventions, in which one team won a gold medal and the other one won a silver medal.

The gold award-winning research project, titled “New Polymer/Graphene Oxide Membrane for Oily Waste Water Filtration”, aims to filter oily waste water up to 97% rejection rate of oil at high water flux compared to other conventional membranes. The team comprised of Advisor, the Head of the Department of Petrochemical Engineering Assoc Prof Dr M. Yamuna and two UTAR Petrochemical Engineering students S. Shimalaa and B. Sarvini.

The other entry that bagged a silver medal was “Recovery of Gold from Electronic Waste through Electrostatic Technique” by the lecturer from the Department of Petrochemical Engineering Dr Lai Koon Chun and his student, also a Petrochemical Engineering student Saw Wen Shen. The research was done on one of the fastest growing waste streams, namely the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE).