Lactic acid fermentation has recently been shown to be a robust storage strategy for food waste prior to conversion to biohydrogen through dark fermentation. However, the importance of initial microbial communities and, more particularly, exogenous microorganisms on the conversion of lactic acid-rich stored substrate is not yet fully elucidated. This study investigates the impact of introducing exogenous inoculum to lactic acid-rich stored food waste prior to biohydrogen production in dark fermentation. Results showed exogenous inoculation produced a statistically significant increase in biohydrogen production rate (R_m) by 199%, 250%, 137%, 130%, 19%, and 10% compared to non-inoculated stored food waste after food waste storage at 4 °C, 10 °C, 23 °C, 35 °C, 45 °C, and 55 °C, respectively. Interestingly, no impact on the maximum production yield (P_m) was observed, but exogenous inoculation increased the accumulation of acetate, up to 160% more compared to endogenous inoculum. The main hydrogen-producing bacteria (HPB) were affiliated with Clostridium sp., while Prevotella_9 sp., another known HPB, was found after the fermentation of the food waste stored at 23 °C. In this study, the interest of exogenous inoculation to convert food waste stored by lactic acid fermentation was demonstrated through an increase in production rate along with higher accumulation of co-products, e.g., acetate. Such findings are promising for further development of process coupling, combining storage and conversion by fermentation of complex food waste.

Gardening is an activity that requires fully care and time which two main factors of nowadays people lack of due to fast moving daily lifestyle. Growing a plant requires a person to monitor several parameters such as water, oxygen, nutrient, light, temperature and support for the plant. In conjunction to overcome the lack of commitment for the people to enjoy their hobby in gardening, an automatic plant pot is introduced. This paper discusses the studies of plant growth which later will be used as the criteria to design and develop a prototype of automatic plant pot. From the studies three outstanding elements were used as the main criteria to design a prototype of automatic plan pot which are water, nitrogen and temperature. These three elements need to be fully automated control to meet the objective that this prototype can help people to do gardening with less care and attention.

This study will focus on finding the best parameters for shot peening process on aluminium alloy 2024-T351. The main parameters of shot peening process is shot material, velocity, number of impact and also the angle. Strain and work hardening is allowed on the target material. The simulation method was performed using ABAQUS 6.11. Simulation was run by applying shots on the aluminum alloy with variable velocity, number of impact as well as the angle of impact. Result shows that by increasing the velocity and the number of impact, the compressive residual stress will significantly increase. The result from the angle simulation shows that the highest impact is caused by an angle of 90°.

Natural fibre composite (NFC) displays a rapid development in the study and innovation sector due to the increasing benefits of the material compared to other types of fibre such as synthetic fibre composites, which includes low price and low environmental impacts. These composites can be explored through various variables and can be tested through various factors such as fibre interfacial adhesion, fibre orientation and fibre strength. However, this thesis focuses only on the testing on the vertical (90°) and horizontal (0°) of fibre orientation as it is still not well investigated, yet. The main objective of this research is to investigate the performance of mechanical properties of kenaf fibre reinforced epoxy resins for 90° and 0° of fibre orientation and analyse the effect of changing the orientation on the material. For the fabrication of the material, manual preparation method has been used and several mechanical testing has been and alkali treatment of kenaf fibre prior fabrication process. For hardness test, the 90° of fibre orientation produced 31.6% higher of hardness strength than 0° of fibre orientation while for impact test, 90° of fibre orientation resulted 39.5% greater of impact energy than 0° of fibre orientation. 6% of kenaf fibre composition with 90° of fibre orientation generated the highest stress to breaks while 2% of kenaf fibre composition with 0° of fibre orientation has the lowest stress to fracture. By conducting the SEM tests, it can be seen clearly that 6% of kenaf fibre composition with 90° of fibre orientation has the smallest gap between the fibres and 2% of kenaf fibre composition with 0° of fibre orientation has the largest gap between fibres. Thus, the performance of mechanical of vertical (90°) of fibre orientation produced better performance in mechanical testing compared to horizontal (0°) of fibre orientation.