GOP ACADEMIC VISIT: BANGKOK THAILAND

Global Outreach Programme

Dr. Norazah Basar and students

The program was held for 6 days starting from 6th until 12th November 2010. In this program, three research institutes that were visited are Remediation Laboratory and Excellent Center of Waste Utilization and Management (ECoWaste) at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) and The Halal Science Center (HSC) at Chulalongkorn University. At each research institute, all students were involved in research presentation and academic discussion with postgraduates, lecturers and researchers there besides visiting the research laboratories.

Remediation laboratory at KMUTT involves research in 3 areas such as development of adsorbents from agricultural wastes for treatment of wastewater containing organic substances and heavy metals / recovery of value metals, phytoremediation of wastewater / soil contaminated with heavy metals and organic substances by local Thai plant and removal of color from food industry by local materials.
 

 

From our visit to ECoWaste at KMUTT, we found that their researches were focused on the anaerobic microorganisms and designing and developing anaerobic reactor especially in biogas industries and technologies. It quit differ from the research conducted by BBRG where for the time being we are focusing on the aerobic bacteria and had develop aerobic pilot plant. However, at the ECoWaste research laboratory, we found that they used advanced analytical instrument especially in the microbial community study such as combination of 16S rDNA sequencing with DGGE technique.

The use of laboratory technology by The Halal Science Center to detect the Haram contamination in Halal food was initiated as a measure to protect Muslim consumer since 1996. This mission continued and provided benefits not only for Muslim consumer, but also for non-Muslim consumers as well. The Halal Science Center has undertaken the training and education for consumers and manufacturers in many provinces such as Bangkok, Samutprakarn, Songkla, Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, Satun, Krabi and Phuket. These activities involved provision of knowledge about Halal by university professors, lecturers and experts in variuos fields as well as the demonstration of scientific analytical techniques, exhibition and introduction about Halal by the staffs of The Halal Science Center.

From this visit, we founded that the research conducted at The Halal Science Center are more focused on the food analysis and cosmetic. Some related research identified such as development of rapid test kit. However, we could said that The Halal Science Center is fully equipped with a variety of advanced and sophisticated scientific instruments. Besides that, visiting to The Halal Science Center make us realized that as a permanent resident in a Muslim country, we should be more concerned about Halal products starting from the raw material resources, production, storage, packaging, transportation and the way those products deliver to consumer.