Effectiveness of farm waste management in Penang / Asrul Azali Kamaruddin

This project is proposed to meet the direct request from the Prime Minister of
Malaysia who encourages research activities based on BioTechnology and
Environmental protection in Malaysia. The Malaysian government has placed the
sustainable, renewable and biotechnology based research and development as the
highest priority in its National Research and Development Strategy. Currently,
farm wastes such as swine, poultry manure and cattle dungs are directly
disposed/discharged in to the open channels and river systems. These problems
are clearly evident among the small scale farmers who are cannot affort to have a
sophisticated and costly waste treatment plants. It causes an alarming rate of
enviromental pollution, expecially water pollution. Thus, a new methodology for
the treatment farm waste namely ‘plug-flow anaerobic digester’ is proposed. At
the same time this system also designed to produce Bio-gas for domestic use. The
research conducted successfully demonstrate the use of beef dung to be used in
the anaerobic digester to yield methane gas.
The system suggest if implemented at the field scale may help the farmers, reduce
pollution and even more give profit to farmers. This project demonstrate the
bridge of bioengineering knowledge that it can be apply in various sector and will
be the pioneer idea to others future or present civil engineers.