IChemE Malaysia Award 2021

The IChemE Young Researcher Award recognizes the early career researchers in the chemical engineering discipline who have demonstrated significant contributions to the chemical engineering society and research community. Each year, the finalists of the top young talents in Malaysia will compete nationally in the IChemE Malaysia Award ceremony for the Young Researcher Award trophy. Dr. How from Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak has won the Young Researcher Award for his outstanding contributions in diverse research fields, particularly in biomass supply chain management and circular economy.

Dr How Bing Shen's contribution

Circular Economy

The Circular Economy (CE) is one of the most attractive solutions to support sustainable development as it is capable of uncovering the constraints of the conventional “linear economy” model, in which the resources consumption and waste generation can both be kept at minimal. Nevertheless, the diffusion of this concept in most industrial arenas is still in its infancy. With this research interest, Dr How has ventured into exploring ways to promote the deployment of CE.

Research contribution

Back in 2019, Dr How and his research team had conducted a comprehensive overview of the feasibility and practicality of transitioning conventional business model into the CE, particularly in developing countries, including Malaysia (Title: Prioritization of sustainability indicators for promoting the circular economy: The case of developing countries). Thereafter, Dr How started to evaluate the feasibility of circular economy dedicated to palm oil value chain. Generally, circular palm oil value chain can be achieved by valorizing the palm oil biomass (eg empty fruit bunches (EFB), palm kernel shells (PKS), palm oil mill effluent (POME)) into value-added products which can be consumed by the palm oil industry (palm oil mill and the biorefineries). In one of his recent works (Title: Synthesis of sustainable circular economy in palm oil industry using graph-theoretic method), he and his team have evaluated the performance of circular economy in palm oil industry and subsequently propose various debottlenecking strategies (eg policy refurbishment, and propose the use of advanced technology) to enhance the sustainability performance of the circular economy model.

Concluding remark

“Bridging the palm oil industry towards circular economy is never a “one-man show” as it requires countless efforts from all stakeholders including industry players, researchers, and consumers.” said Dr How. It is essential for all stakeholders to show determination in supporting sustainable development.