This chapter reviews the status of hazardous waste management in Malaysia. It highlights the sources of the hazardous waste, government policies on waste generation and management, the involvement of the stakeholders, and the various management procedures adopted in Malaysia. Currently, the manufacturing sector is the major contributor in hazardous waste generated in Malaysia. Other sectors that contribute include household, agriculture, medical, and other industrial sectors. Malaysian government's resolve on human health protection and safeguarding the environment prompted various acts, regulations, and orders such as the popular Environmental Quality Act (EQA) 1974. The regulations made pursuant to the Environmental Quality Act have continuously improved to address the issues on the definition and classifications of hazardous waste and the management process in Malaysia. The management of hazardous waste in Malaysia is effectively growing as a result of continuous review of the regulations and enforcement of the acts. The stakeholders in the industries have also been active in keeping to the EQA regulations to keep the environment safe as much as possible.

The oil and gas industry struggles to prevent formation of hydrates in pipeline by spending substantial amount of dollars. Hydrates are ice-like crystalline compounds that are composed of water and gas in which the gas molecules are trapped in water cavities. The hydrate formation is favorable at elevated pressure and reduced temperature and can be determined through experiment. However, the cost involved to determine early hydrate formation using experiment is driving researchers to seek for robust prediction methods using statistical and analytical methods. Main aim of the present study is to investigate applicability of radial basis function networks and support vector machines to hydrate formation conditions prediction. The data needed for modeling was taken from well-established literature. Performance of the models was assessed based on MSE, MAE, MAPE, MSPE, and Modified Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient. Data-based models enable the oil industry to predict the conditions leading to hydrate formation hence preventing clogging of the pipeline and high pressure buildup that could lead to sudden burst at the connections.

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This paper attempts to explain the motion behaviour of the marine riser coupled to a drill string when the vortex induced vibration (VIV) is involved. Vibrations have been reported to have a major effect on the drilling performance, affecting the rate of penetration (ROP), causing severe damages to the drilling tools and also reduces the efficiency of the drilling process. There are two major components of drilling tools that are subjected to vibration, namely the marine riser and the drilling string. Analysis of vibration in the marine riser and drill string are two topical areas that have individually received considerable attention by researchers in the past. Though these two subjects are interrelated, borne by the fact that the marine riser encapsulates and protects the drill pipe, there have been few attempts to investigate them together as a unity. Due to the complexities of the models, simplified assumptions were made in order to undertake the investigation by using staggered approach. The results were compared with the experimental and simulation data from the open literature. It was found that the maximum displacement with negative damping occurs at low frequency and rotation speed.

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