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The effects of oil price on the price of selected intermediate food products in Malaysia
No full textMaster of Science in EconomicsA fluctuation in the oil price has been addressed by numerous previous studies as it can have great impacts on economies. An increase in oil price can result in a higher price of other goods. Sugar, egg and coconut milk are the intermediate food products that can be inevitably affected due to a higher oil price. Therefore, this present study aims to investigate the effects of oil price on the price of selected intermediate food products in Malaysia. This research narrows the focus of the investigation, to concentrate on the three types of oil price: RON95, RON97 and diesel. These oil price can major contribute to the
price of selected intermediate food products (sugar, egg and coconut milk) in Malaysia.
The sample period covers 84 months from 2008 to 2015. The relationship between oil
price and the price of selected intermediate food products is examined by using the linear
autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test. The bound test was conducted and the
results show that all the variables in functional form framework are bound together in the
long-run. It was also ascertained that in the long-run, the price of RON97 influences the
prices of selected intermediate food products (sugar, egg and coconut milk) in Malaysia.
Nevertheless, the price of diesel affects only the price of sugar, whereas RON95 is
negatively and significantly associated with the price of sugar alone. The error-correction
terms test results reveal that the price of diesel is positively correlated with the price of
sugar respectively in the short-run. On the other hand, the findings found that the prices
of RON97 significantly influenced the prices of egg and coconut milk in Malaysia.
However, the prices of sugar and coconut milk had adjusted at a higher speed compared
with the price of egg which had adjusted at a lower speed. Therefore, these findings are
important for the government to control the price of oil in order to achieve the stability of
the price of selected intermediate food products in Malaysia such as sugar, egg and
coconut milk
Poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) membranes for pervaporation of butanol/water mixture: fabrication, characterization and application
No full textMaster of Science in Bioprocess EngineeringThe polymeric poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) membranes are in current used for a number of process applications in which one of these applications are pervaporation. In this work, PVDF membrane with controlled asymmetric microstructure has been functionalised with ionic liquid for selective separation of butanol in water mixture via membrane pervporation process. The fabrication of polymeric membrane from poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) polymer with N-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone (NMP) serves as a solvent is prepared using phase inversion method with several parameters to produce the optimum membrane condition. To produce the optimum polymeric membrane, the formation of finger-like structure needs to be increased by manipulating two major parameters, the coagulation bath medium (0 until 75 w/w% ethanol concentration) and evaporation time (0 minutes to 3 minutes) during phase inversion. Comprehensive material characterization techniques via scanning electron microscopy (SEM), fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, surface area analysis, porosity analysis and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) were followed to ascertain the nature of the membrane fabrication and their inherent material properties. In membrane performance test using pervaporation experiment, the effect of feed temperature and feed flow rate was investigated in order to get the optimum membrane separation. Temperature 50oc with the flow rate 20 L/hr had become optimum condition for this process. Using PVDF membrane with 15 w/w% ethanol concentrations at 2 minutes evaporation time gives better selectivity with higher separation factor (32) and low permeation flux (4.9 kg m-2 hr-1) compared to other type of membrane. This type of membrane was improved by adding the ionic liquid and results in increasing the separation factor from 32 to 78. Meanwhile the permeation flux also increases
from 4.9 kg m-2 hr-1 to 7.9 kg m-2hr-1
