KUALA LUMPUR: Oil and gas corporation Petronas scooped four of eight trophies at the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) Malaysia Awards on Monday for outstanding achievements in the profession in Malaysia.
The company was the resounding winner at the IChemE Malaysia Awards 2019, taking three highly commended entries for excellence in chemical engineering, alongside its winning entries.
Petronas dominated in the Oil & Gas Award and Process Safety Award categories. Its project Efficient Sampling Using Desorbent Sight Glass (DSG) was particularly successful in the early evening, winning the Oil & Gas Award and gaining highly commended in the Process Safety Award. The use of a DSG has reduced desorbent sampling times from 25 minutes to 2 minutes and could save costs of up to RM15,000 per year.
Later, the company went on to win the Training and Development Award for its project Process Safety R2C2. Based upon the Influence Model for effective change management, this three-year project has transformed the process safety performance and culture at Petronas Chemicals Methanol.
Petronas Penapisan Terengganu won the Process Safety Award for its project Early Warning Analytics Using DRA. Dynamic Risk Analyzer (DRA) is an analytical tool that provides early warning and detection of hidden near misses to engineers and plant operators allowing time for personnel to troubleshoot plant deviations to prevent unwanted incidents.
Sime Darby Research and Novozymes Malaysia were crowned the winner of the Palm Oil Award and the Sustainability Award for their joint project Enzymatic Assisted Extraction of Palm Oil.
The Student Chapter Award went to Monash University Malaysia. The student team were presented with the trophy for forging links between industry and academia, and promoting the positive work that chemical engineers do to help address some of society’s major challenges.
The special guests were Royal Patron of IChemE Malaysia, the Raja Permaisuri Perak, Tuanku Zara Salim, and Teresa Kok, Minister of Primary Industries.
The final awards of the evening were presented by Tuanku Zara, who is also a chemical engineer. She presented the Young Industrialist Award to Petronas’ Irene Lock Sow Mei and the Young Researcher Award to Monash University’s Serene Lock Sow Mun.
Irene is a multi award winning chemical engineer who has demonstrated strong leadership qualities, a professional work ethic and shown that being a leukaemia survivor has not hindered her success. She has led on numerous utility and wastewater-related projects.
Serene’s research areas include multi-scale simulation, modelling, process simulation and molecular modelling.
