At Last The Engineers are Looking at Sustainabilty in their profession.

I attended a talk at IEM (Institution of Engineers, Malaysia) on the role of Chemical Engineers in the Biotech Sector. It was a refreshing talk considering when I studied Chemical Engineering, I thought it was not environmental friendly as the petrochemicals which form a large part of the syllabus was a depleting resources. The talk was very interesting, although not many turned up maybe due to the pouring rain. It turned out that the speaker was my junior at University who is now a professor and Dean at the Faculty of Biotechnology Engineering and Biomolecular Sciences at a local university. I was proud that an alumnus of my University is now an expert in Bioprocess Engineering and Environmental Biotechnology who started out as a Chemical Engineer and continued his postgraduate studies both in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology.He is in the right place as a source of expert reference in the Malaysian government's plan to include biotechnology as another engine of growth.

Malaysia has a great potential of harnessing energy from agricultural biomass especially from palm oil and at last, finally the government has come to realise this. It may take a few more years for plans to actually work out. I understand that bioethanol for biodiesel can also be extracted from the empty fruit bunch instead of from the fresh fruit bunches only. This would allay the fears that edible oils should not be used for biodiesel.

Another interesting point I learn from the talk is local innovation is necessary for the palm oil industry as we are the pioneers. Even Indonesia is learning from us. An example given was when a machine imported from Germany used in the Wood Industry to shred hardwood fail miserably when used for shredding oil palm empty fruit bunches because of the oil content. A local fabricated machine saved the day.

It was recommended that old processes has to be changed for sustainability. Biosubstitution using natural or synthetically produced bioresources should be employed to improve industrial practices and processes. Engineers will have to work with biotechnologists towards lowering the costs of production and increasing performance using the appropriate technology that is environmental friendly and at the same time profitable.

That is quite a challenge for the engineers attending the meeting when some were trying to learn new terms such as DNA, Genomics, Proteomics, and everything Bio such as bioplastics, biosensors, biocompost, biosugars, bioacids, biofuel and even the reactor is now called a bioreactor!