Personal statement

Dr Arshad is a Senior Lecturer and the Course Coordinator (Master of Advance Engineering - MAE) of the Mechanical Discipline in the School of Engineering. Dr Arshad is passionate in clean energy, fuel and chemical research area. Specifically he is working in renewable energy, process design and development of themo-chemical reactor, microwave reactor and processing, product analysis, energy efficiency and sustainability. Dr Arshad has experience in design and development of bench scale fluidized bed reactor to produce high siliceous rice husk ash. He also developed both a lab scale and bench scale microwave pyrolysis system at UTM, Malaysia and UNB, Canada, respectively. Currently, he is working on several projects such as “Techno-economic feasibility of using solar energy for BRT Sunway electric buses”, “Microwave sterilization of palm fresh fruits”, “Thermo-kinetic optimization of oil palm biomass pyrolysis products using hybrid Artificial Intelligent model” and others in collaboration with industries and government.

Dr Arshad has published several articles in the area of dielectric properties of agricultural biomass. He also conducted modeling and simulation of biomass in COMSOL Multiphysics v 4.3. He graduated his Bachelor in Chemical Engineering from University of Pune, India and then did Masters in Chemical and PhD in Mechanical from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. He went to pursue postdoctoral at University of New Brunswick, Canada. Currently, he is working as a Lecturer at Monash University Malaysia. His teaching commitment include Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Engineering, Sustainable Energy Technologies. He is also a reviewer to several international journals. He also loves to teach and train undergraduate, graduate students and researchers through seminars, workshops and training.

Please do not hesitate to contact Dr Arshad if you are interested to pursue Master or PhD in his research area.

Academic degrees

• Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2012
• Master in Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 2007
• Degree in Chemical Engineering, University of Pune, India, 2002

Professional affiliations

Member of International Professional Bodies

• Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers, Member
• The Energy Institute UK, Associate Member

Research Interests

My primary research ambition is to lead in clean energy relevant research that will have a positive impact on the social and environment so as to result in an improved quality of life both now and in the generations to come. The key is through developing energy efficient technologies and using renewable source of energy, in a way that is relevant to current policies. The goal is to develop new system and ways to produce clean energy, fuels and chemicals through a combination of i) raw materials (biomass, solar or wind), ii) technologies (microwave, thermo-chemical process, etc.), and iii) optimal model predictions (simulations, machine learning and artificial intelligence) with observations through data assimilation. This area of research will gain wide spread interest in the coming years.

Research Projects

Title: Techno-economic feasibility assessment of using renewable (solar) energy for the BRT-Sunway transport system

The overall focus of the project is to present techno-economic analysis of integrated solar and waste energy for BRT Sunway transport system. The specific objectives of the project are a)To study the technical feasibility of using integrated solar energy for BRT transport system, b) To evaluate the economic viability of using integrated solar energy for BRT transport system, c) To assess the environmental and sustainability parameters of implementing the solar energy, d) To compare the sustainability of BRT electric buses with that of existing diesel and CNG buses.

Title: Sterilization of palm oil fresh fruit in an industrial scaled microwave system: Techno-economic feasibility and product quality analysis 

There are more than 400 palm oil mills in Malaysia, accounting about to 40% (~19 million tonnes) of the world palm oil production. The palm oil milling process has not been changed much since 1970s in the industry. Among this is the sterilization process, which consumes extensive amount of energy (in form of high pressure steam) and it’s a time-consuming process (~1 to 2 hours). Furthermore, if the palm fruit is not properly sterilized, it can contribute to risk of oxidation of oil from fruits, over-sterilization and loss of some phytonutrients. There is growing demand for energy efficiency. Thus, the selection of sterilizer will influence the overall energy efficiency of the palm oil mill process. Most of the research work in the past are confined to sterilization of fresh palm fruits at the lab-scale or domestic microwaves. Thus, the overall objective of this project is to sterilize fresh palm fruits in a pilot scale microwave technology to generate new detailed data on the energy, economic and quality of palm oil.

Title: Thermo-kinetics optimization to enhance the pyrolysis products from oil palm biomass using novel hybrid artificial intelligence model

The specific objectives of the proposed project are:

1.    To develop a novel hybrid artificial intelligent (AI) model to optimize the thermo-kinetic behavior of oil palm biomass pyrolysis

2.    To train, test and verify the developed hybrid AI model for the best prediction and performance that can improve the pyrolysis products

3.    To predict the biomass pyrolysis behavior by implementing the developed AI model through the experimental insights and data

4.    To propose a new software tool for biomass pyrolysis process optimization based on the developed model

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Local grants

• Techno-economic feasibility assessment of using renewable (solar) energy for the BRT-Sunway transport system, Arshad Salema, Varghese Swamy, Joanne Lim Mun Yee, 2018 - 2019, Monash University Malaysia Sunway Group of Companies
• Thermo-kinetics optimization to enhance the pyrolysis products from oil palm biomass using novel hybrid artificial intelligence model, Arshad Adam Salema, Tan Chee Pin, Md Abdus Samad Kamal, Mohd Azlan Bin Hussain, and Kashif Ishaque, 2018-2021, Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), Malaysia

Current supervision

Istiaq Jameel

Development of continuous microwave processing system for biomass

2018 - Present

Monash University Malaysia

Syed Mohammed Ahsan

Microwave sterilization of oil palm fresh fruits

2018 - Present

Monash University Malaysia

Shah Mohammed Mominul Islam

Techno-economic feasibility assessment of using renewable (solar) energy for the BRT-Sunway transport system

2018 - Present

Monash University Malaysia

Salman Belo

Carbon emission pinch analysis and pyrolysis of biomass with plastic

2014-2018

Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia

Local Award/Recognition/Exhibition/Stewardship

• Transforming education through trailblazing innovations (TETI) 2017 - Monash Education Academy, 2017