EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Chemical engineering students who are undertaking ECH4506-Renewable Energy

course attended the open day by the TNB Research Centre. A total of 13 students consisting of
third year and final year were present in the open day. The objective of this visit is to expose
the students to the latest technology related to renewable energy as well as gain some new
information that were uncovered in the class. This exposure is vital for the students to see the
practicality of the technology, theories and reviews from assignments that have been
visualized.

TNB Research (TNBR) Centre is a development from TNB for TNB. This centre
concsists of researchers who are bombarded with lateset issues faced by TN or its stakeholders
and come up witeh the most practical solution. Not only acting as the problem solver, TNBR
also a solution provider for the current problems in Malaysia and globally. This research centre
has been operating since 1993; for 26 years. It is situated in Kajang, Selangor; nearby UPM,
Serdang which eased the visit to the open day with small number of students. TNBR is well
known for being one-stop to solve technically with remarkable innovation when any issues are
channelled to them. The centre has a few division and experts in the particular division.

The content of this report will cover observation made and knowledge gained
throughout the open day. Since our focus was mainly on renewable energy, we started off by
information collected in the renewable energy exhibition booth, continued with civil and
geoinformatics ended with fuel combustion booths. We discussed about researches and
innovation that the researchers have come up with in those booths. The report also covered
slightly on the pocket talk that we attended on ‘Fishing for New Sanctuary’. This talk was about
the alternative introduced by the research centre to solve the fast declining Mahseer Fish
population – five stages of ‘TAGAL’ system. Finally, at the end of the report the reflection and
recommendation were included. Reflection consists of new knowledge gained at every part of
the open day as well as make comparison with knowledge gained in classroom and readings.
Recommendation consist some elements that we believe that would make the visit more
effective and beneficial for the students.
INTRODUCTION
A group of 13 undergraduate students from ECH 4506 – Renewable Energy class
attended the TNB Research Open Day on 12th March 2019. This open day is done at the TNB
Research Centre at Kajang. The purpose to attend this open day is expose the students to the
researches and real industry issues regarding the renewable energy. This exposure would be
useful for the students to visualize what have been learnt in the class and how to relate with the
engineering solutions in the market. The theme for the open day this year is ‘Energizing
Research, Enlivening Innovation”. This theme relates to the researchers sharing their inputs
and invention and enables the stakeholders of TNB to bring the invention to the next level or
commercialisation.

Generally, this open day has 3 objectives to the TNB Research centre. Firstly,
exhibiting the roles and contributions made by TNB Research to the significant party.
Significant party consists of the stakeholders, the shareholders, the industrialists, the
representatives from NGOs. The students are not included in the list because the visit here on
open day is merely to gain knowledge and observe the development in the renewable energy
sector for the students. Secondly, it also acts as the platform for the researchers to promote their
research activities, technical services that can be provide and commercialisation of their
innovations. Researchers exhibit their posters and smaller scale of 3D model of their innovation
so that it would be easier to give proper explanation. Thirdly, provides the opportunity for the
significant party to form the networking with TNBR and eventually, increase the economy
position of TNB. Usually the attractive innovation and can be applicable in the market would
be chosen to start the networking.

Being part of the open day, students are exposed to not only renewable energy
innovations, but also in many other sectors. For an example, there exhibition booths related to
grids – ‘Smart Grids’ which is about the enhancement made to regular used grids, environment
– ‘Built Environmental and Climate Change’ which tools or measures taken to measure the
difference in climate and monitoring the data to take corrective actions if the change is beyond
the limit set and many more. The renewable energy booth exhibits many alternatives to
generate electricity apart from coal and natural gas. Those engineered alternatives are not
merely focusing on natural source of renewable energy, but also the engineer-altered-plant,
algae. These technologies created by them were known as Green Technology which was briefly
discussed in ECH4506 class.
REFLECTION
In the 4 hours being present for the TNB Research Open day, there was a lot to be
learned. Starting with the exhibition booths, we visited nearly every booth, a total of 12 booths;
one on renewable energy and green technology. In the renewable energy (RE) booth, we
encountered a number of invention and was mesmerized with the practicality from words in
papers and books. For an example, the upcoming innovation to create chemical sequester to
trap CO2 and reuse it as fuel to run machines and more. This innovation is an ideal cycle for a
plant, whereby there will be minimal waste to the environment and waste is being used as fuel
for the same plant – it sounds very ideal but they are in the process to make it become true.
Furthermore, in this booth, we were explained on how they biomass and solar to generate
electricity. Even though it is not being done as widely as the usage of coal, but we believe that
the situation will come soon and we would create the same standard as Japan in their renewable
energy sector.

Apart from the RE booth, we gained new knowledge when visited the Civil and
Geoinformatics booth; situated right next to RE booth. Until we visit the booth, we did not
know there was a technology to drill as deep as 200m to obtain drinking water; generally, the
surface water will be processed for drinking water. However, from this particular booth, we
got to know the water at the deeper level of earth is very clean and requires less processing –
eventually lesser cost and healthier. This booth had the invention of portable water treatment
plant. This invention was beyond our imagination because typical as such plant is immobile.
The water treatment portable plant symbolises to us how engineered technology is the result of
concerning researcher to the need of the world and to ease people’s living, thus, improving the
lifestyle to a better extend.

Next, from visiting the outdoor facilities; we learnt the possibilities in improving the
standard of living and dependency on coal for power generation. We visited the floating solar
panels and the electric charging station and observe the solar carpark. Solar panels are being
common, but floating ones are the new with many additional good values with it, makes it
unique. We learned that a slight modification in current technology can bring an adverse
difference in the reliability and marketability of the latter technology. Electric charging station
did make us realise the technology has to be spread widely to reduce the dependency on fossil
fuel and save environment. We can take Japan and China as our role model in substituting
fossil fuel-dependant vehicles to greener technology; as per discussed in class. In brief, we
learnt many new, upcoming technology that has been discussed in ECH 4506 technically ad
general.

RECOMMENDATION
This visit should be continued annually for the ECH 4506 class as the knowledge gained from
the exposure is very useful. In our opinion, the group of students that will be visiting in the
future can maybe split to smaller groups. These groups should take turn to listen to the pocket
and visit the exhibition. Other than that, maybe the students should be allowed to visit the
laboratory in the future to know the how inventions are done and where it is being carried out.
On the other hand, the smaller groups to concentrate on few numbers of booths and gain enough
information from the assigned booths and share those information during the class to cater
everyone’s thirst of knowledge.