By Zareef Muzammil
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 23 — Participants of this year’s Selangor State Invention Award (AINS) went above and beyond to create groundbreaking technologies to improve Selangor residents’ lives.
One of them is an alkali-activated carbide lime product to treat industrial wastewater using scheduled wastes from factories, the brainchild of an eight-man team from Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Shah Alam comprising students and a lecturer.
The group bagged this year’s AINS special award for the best final product and the winning entry for the higher education institution category.
Its project leader Nur Ain Mohd Zainuddin, a chemical engineering studies lecturer, said her team had spent two years creating the solution as they experimented with several different types of wastewater.
“The product’s invention supports sustainable development goals, chiefly to avoid discharging scheduled wastes into landfills. Before they are discharged, we process and reuse them,” she said after the awards ceremony at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre yesterday.
Ain said her team is currently conducting a pilot project at disposal sites and aims to market the product by November next year.
Meanwhile, the Sabak Bernam District and Land Office (PDT) bagged the public sector (PDT) category by developing an online data storage system.
District Officer Amri Ismail said the idea came about when they realised that information is often missing from its database, making the retrieval process cumbersome.
“The development of this e-gazette system took into account problems often faced by land administrators, not just in Sabak Bernam, but other districts nationwide as well.
“Previously, information was keyed in manually, and we often faced issues where files or documents were missing. With this system, we can avoid the problem from happening while facilitating the process of referencing,” he said.
The awards were presented by Menteri Besar Dato’ Seri Amirudin Shari during the Selangor R&D and Innovation Expo, held in conjunction with the Selangor International Business Summit (SIBS) 2023.
This year’s AINS, which saw 220 entries, comprised three public sector categories — local authorities, PDT and agencies other than local authorities and PDT — and four other categories opened to the public, namely the private sector, higher education institutions, schools, and grassroots.
Introduced in 2010, the annual award aims to encourage the people of Selangor to develop new and creative ideas and promote innovation.
