This paper serves to review the status of energy security in Malaysia and the strategic planning that was taken to enhance the future energy security. Since the early stage of industrial revolution in 2002, Malaysia enjoyed a continuous development in the sector due to the prosperous in natural resources such as oil, gas and coal. However, due to the excessive development without proper planning, Malaysia is now facing a problem of energy insecurity as ample of resources are needed to sustain the domestic development. With issues of price volatility and the reduction in oil production, the oil business become unstable. It leads to the thriving of natural gas and coal which enable energy generation. Nonetheless, these resources are finite and could be run out one day in the future. Hence, the government of Malaysia has been doing strategic planning for the development of Malaysia to ensure its energy security. These plannings include the management of current reservoir and the energy policy, which enhance the effectiveness of energy usage within Malaysia to ensure energy security in Malaysia.

In recent years, agricultural wastes and biomass have been extensively investigated as low cost adsorbents in heavy metal removal owing to the facts that they are relatively cheap and exhibit high adsorption capacities. Water melon rind is a natural and rich source of the non-essential amino acid citrulline, containing abundant amino and carboxyl groups, which have been proven to have great capability of binding heavy metals in aqueous solutions. In the present study, various chemical solvents were utilized to pre-treat watermelon rind in enhancing its Zn 2+ ions adsorption performance. Improvement in the physical and chemical properties of chemically treated watermelon rind was evidenced through SEM and FTIR characterization results. Drastic improvement in the adsorption efficiency was observed compared to non-treated watermelon rind that resulted that at only 52.4 % removal percentage. NaOH solution was found to be the best pre-treatment solvent compared to Ca(OH)2 , H2SO4 , and C6H8O7 , with the highest Zn2+ removal percentage attained up to 90.2 % using NaOH treated watermelon rind. The Zn2+ ions adsorption process using NaOH treated watermelon rind was then further investigated using a statistical tool. Fractional factorial design (FFD) was applied to evaluate the effects of 7 process parameters, namely solution pH, adsorption temperature, biosorbent dosage, initial metal ions concentration, contact time, concentration of pre-treatment solvent and stirring rate. Contribution of every parameter in influencing the adsorption efficiency was evaluated and factors that significantly affected the adsorption were elucidated by employing experimental design and analysis of variance in FFD. The result of factorial design revealed that solution pH, adsorption temperature, biosorbent dosage, initial metal ions concentration and the interaction effect between biosorbent dosage and initial metal ions concentration imposed significant effect (P < 0.05) to the removal percentage of Zn2+ ions at the end of the adsorption process. Effects of these process factors on the adsorption efficiency were investigated and discussed in detail.

Humic acid is a natural component of the aquatic environment that affects the water quality by colour, taste as well as enhances biological growth in the ecosystem. The present work demonstrated the feasibility of employing common salts for humic acid separation with the effect of salt valency and salt concentrations as the main investigation parameters. Three types of common salts, namely NaCl, CaCl2, and AlCl3, at the concentration of 0.005 M – 0.5 M were tested for their humic acid removal efficiencies via coagulation and natural sedimentation. Experimental results showed that mild amount of AlCl3 (0.01 M) is sufficient to induce 82 % humic acid removal. On the other hand, the optimum humic acid removals were recorded as 77.4 % and 12.5 % when 0.1 M of CaCl2 and 0.5 M NaCl were used, respectively. In fact, a comparison graph clearly showed that the humic acid removal efficiency increased following the salt valency (i.e. Na+ < Ca2+ < Al3+) at all tested concentrations. Nevertheless, a slight reduction in humic acid removal was recorded when the AlCl3 concentration increased above it optimum value. The same salts were employed for alginate removal. Here, it was found that there is no separation detected when NaCl was used as the coagulant; while 0.5 M of CaCl2 and AlCl3 resulted in 62.5 % and 88.9 % alginate removal, respectively. Effectiveness of using common salts for both humic acid and alginate removal suggesting separation of dissolved organic matters can be done without the need to fully rely on synthetic materials such as membrane, activated carbon, synthetic flocculants, nanoparticles and etc.