Due to insufficient water supply, the residents of the rural area of Sarawak are forced to use peat water as daily use for domestic water. The consumption of untreated peat water can lead to various waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea, and other serious illnesses such as typhoid and dysentery. Water treatment system such as electrocoagulation system can be developed to improve the water quality of the peat water as electrocoagulation requires simple equipment that can be operated easily, no usage of chemicals coagulant, producing less sludge and cost-effective treatment system. The main aim of this study is to develop a kinetic study and statistical modelling for both batch and continuous electrocoagulation processes of peat water treatment in Sarawak using aluminium and copper electrodes. This study focuses on the peat water treatment using electrocoagulation system. The fabricated electrocoagulation system is designed according to the characteristics in which the technology for building and the material used for constructing the electrocoagulation system should be available locally, the electrocoagulation system should be easy to fabricate and maintain, as well as low cost for construction and operation. For this study, Response Surface Methodology in Minitab software and Microsoft Excel are used for kinetic studies, statistical modelling, and process optimization. Process optimization is carried out to minimize energy consumption as well as the turbidity and TSS level. The optimum conditions for batch and continuous electrocoagulation system are 14.899 A/m2 and 41.818 min, and 3.861 A/m2 and 37.778 min respectively.

Maltogenic amylase (Mag1) is a potent enzyme that hydrolyzes the glycosidic bond of polysaccharides to produce malto-oligosaccharides (MOS). However, the Mag1 enzyme has poor stability and reusability, leading to inefficient MOS production. Enzyme immobilization is a promising method to solve the enzyme stability problem. Entrapment and encapsulation technique was used in this study to immobilize Mag1 because of high biocompatibility and prevention of enzyme degradation, hence lesser loss of enzymatic activity. Chitosan was used as a coating membrane on the alginate matrix, preventing enzyme leaching from the beads. Mag1 entrapped in alginate-chitosan beads showed better performance compared to alginate beads in terms of thermostability, reusability and enzyme retention. Alginate-chitosan beads showed improvement of temperature stability of approximately 35%, 30% and 20% at a respective temperature of 30 °C, 40 °C and 50 °C. Reusability analysis showed immobilized Mag1 can be used up to at least eight cycles with retained activity of 80% and 70% from its initial activity for alginate-chitosan and alginate beads respectively. Enzyme leakage percentage in alginate-chitosan was 7-21%, while that in alginate was 12-35%. The overall findings envisage the promising application of alginate-chitosan beads immobilized Mag1 as a biocatalyst for MOS synthesis.

Sarawak state government has established Sarawak Alternative Rural Water Supply (SAWAS) programme in order to serve as a purpose of providing safe and clean water to the rural communities not connected to municipal clean water supply. In the rural areas of Sarawak, particularly on the coastal region where municipal water supply is not available, the villagers are normally resorted to utilize rainwater and peat water for daily usage. Some of these rural areas are even not connected to electricity grid. Subsequently, one of the proposed methods to eradicate these problems in supplying clean water without electricity supply grid is to implement stand-alone water treatment system with solar power system. As such, the main aim of the study is to design a solar power system to support Sarawak peat water electrocoagulation treatment process. The study is divided into two stages. In the first stage, the study designs a solar power system to support the treatment process of peat water for both batch and continuous electrocoagulation systems. This includes designing and fabrication of a small-scale solar power system. The second stage of the study involved experimental studies on both batch and continuous electrocoagulation systems in order to study the effectiveness of solar power system to supply electricity for the electrocoagulation systems. Overall, the study has developed a solar power system for both batch and continuous electrocoagulation of peat water system. From the experiments conducted, the developed systems are capable to reduce 18.8% and 46.15% of peat water turbidity for batch and continuous electrocoagulation systems respectively. However, in order to meet a more stringent drinking water standards, some improvements on the designed systems are indispensable.

Fatty acids in wastewater contribute to high chemical oxygen demand. The use of cellulose nanofiber (CNF) to adsorb the fatty acids is limited by its strong internal hydrogen bonding. This study aims to functionalize CNF with β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) and elucidate the adsorption behaviour which is yet to be explored. β-CD functionalized CNF (CNF/β-CD) was achieved by crosslinking of β-CD and citric acid. Functionalization using 7% (w/v) β-CD and 8% (w/v) citric acid enhanced mechanical properties by increasing its thermal decomposition. CNF/β-CD was more efficient in removing palmitic acid, showcased by double adsorption capacity of CNF/β-CD (33.14% removal) compared to CNF (15.62% removal). CNF/β-CD maintained its adsorption performance after five cycles compared to CNF, which reduced significantly after two cycles. At 25 °C, the adsorption reached equilibrium after 60 min, following a pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The intraparticle diffusion model suggested chemical adsorption and intraparticle interaction as the controlling steps in the adsorption process. The maximum adsorption capacity was 8349.23 mg g−1 and 10485.38 mg g−1 according to the Sips and Langmuir isotherm model, respectively. The adsorption was described as monolayer and endothermic, and it involved both a physisorption and chemisorption process. This is the first study to describe the adsorption behaviour of palmitic acid onto CNF/β-CD.

Peat water is commonly found in the coastal areas of Southern and Central Sarawak. About 39% of the rural communities in Sarawak are yet to receive clean water supply. As such the rural communities depend excessively rainwater and peat water for domestic usage. However, the usage of untreated peat water for domestic usage may cause harm to human health and well-being as it contains natural organic matters such as humic substances. Electrocoagulation is an environmentally friendly and simple process of water treatment. This research aims to develop a batch electrocoagulation process for treatment of peat water in Sarawak using Aluminium electrodes. The research includes the study on electrocoagulation for peat water treatment, design, and fabrication of batch electrocoagulation process using Aluminium, experimental study for optimum performances of the electrocoagulation, and economic analysis of the electrocoagulation system. Several parameters that affect the performances of the electrocoagulation system are studied such as the inter-electrode distance, number of electrodes, current density and treatment time. The performance of the system is evaluated based on the removal efficiency on turbidity, colour, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total Organic Content (TOC) and Total Suspended Solid (TSS). The system successfully removes 100% of colour, 93.35% of turbidity, 89.80% of COD, 88.22% of TOC, and 87.50% of TSS by using a current density of 25 A/m2 in 80 minutes and 8 Aluminium electrodes with inter electrode spacing of 2 cm. The final quality of treated peat water is determined to be suitable for domestic usage which falls under Class 1 water of the National Water Quality based on the parameters analyzed. The operating cost of 25 A/m2 current density for 80 minutes of treatment time by using 8 electrode plates is RM 4.32 per m3 of peat water.