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1.1 Introduction
Industrial training is a mandatory course for all diploma students of Chemical Engineering. It
is a requirement to fulfil the course in order to complete the course as well as graduate from
the university. The training refers to work experience that is relevant to professional
development prior to graduation. For Chemical Engineering students, a 16-week period is
allocated for training at location chosen by students themselves. No restriction is imposed on
them whether they want to work in government agencies or private organizations.
For this semester, the trainee, Mohamad Afie bin Rosman (2014836288), has started
working in Vance Bioenergy Sdn. Bhd. starting from 5th of December 2016 until 18th of
March 2017.
I. To fulfil the requirement for the students to graduate from this course
II. Apply theories learnt in classroom in working environments
III. Improve students' confidence after graduation
IV. Improve both soft and hard skills
V. Improve communication and management skills
COMPANY BACKGROUND
2.1 Introduction
Vance Bioenergy Sdn. Bhd. is a leading certified producer of fatty acid methyl ester (Vance
Biodiesel), pharmaceutical-grade refined glycerine (Vance Refined Glycerine) and other
oleochemicals for use in many industries. Its production plants are located on a 3.2 ha site in
the Pasir Gudang Industrial Estate of Johor, Malaysia.
On-site, Vance Bioenergy has two methyl ester plants totaling 150,000 metric tons of annual
production capacity and two of the largest single standing glycerine refineries in Asia
producing 40,000 metric tons of pharmaceutical-grade refined glycerine per annum. It also
has its own storage tanks with a total capacity of 25,000 metric tons and equipped with
nitrogen blanketing. Its fully integrated clean room class drumming line and warehouse
ensure adherence to the highest quality and hygiene standards.
With 24/7/365 on-site laboratory houses the latest testing equipment and is staffed by a full
team of chemists, laboratory managers and technicians to maintain our stringent quality
assurance standards. The team also engages in R&D and ongoing efforts to improve the
products, expand our product lines and optimize production processes. The logistics team at
Vance Bioenergy is also key to ensuring accurate and timely delivery of products to
customers worldwide and is experienced in managing the entire spectrum of packaging and
shipping solutions.
This company is a socially and environmentally responsible company and has been an
active member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) since 2006.
Vance Bioenergy is a subsidiary of Vance Group Ltd, a diversified and financially strong
business group headquartered in Singapore.
Vance Bioenergy Sdn. Bhd. Holds a mission to be a successful and sustainable organization
which does it best for its stakeholders which produce highest product quality, with on time
logistics, also providing excellent service attention, solution focused and long term
relationships.
Figure below show the logo which officially being used by Vance Bioenergy mainly for any of
their business activities :
Mainly, this company producing bio-diesel and they are one of the biggest exporters of this
product in Malaysia. Besides that they are also producing Refined Glycerine (RG),
Tocotrienols Rich Fraction (TRF) and Cocodiethanolamide (CDE).
• FOOD • USED IN
INDUSTRIES STANDARD
• HUMECTANT DIESEL
S ENGINE
BIODIESE
GLYCERIN
L
COCO- TOCOTRIENOL
DIETHANOL RICH
AMIDE FRACTION
There are six departments in VBSB and the figure below shows the list of departments
available which are:
Production Departments
Operation Departments
Maintainance
Departments
Logistics Departments
3.1 Introduction
Production department is one of six departments in Vance Bioenergy Sdn. Bhd. (VBSB). The
trainee, Mohamad Afie bin Rosman was assigned to this department from 5th of December
2016 until 18th of March 2017 under supervision of Mr. Che Kamrudding bin Che Soh as the
plant engineer in this company. The man responsible for this department is Mr. Azhar bin
Salleh who is the head of the department. This department was established since the
company first operated back in 2006 and now this department have a workforce of 24
personnel including the general manager, head of department, plant engineer, supervisors,
senior plant operators and plant operators operating all six production plant which are Methyl
Ester Plant 1, Methyl Ester Plant 2, Glycerine Plant 1, Glycerine Plant 2, Coco-
diethanolamide Plant and Theta Plant (for TRF production).
3.2 Responsibilities
1. Monitor and make sure all of the production plant are working as it should be
2. Make sure all the product produced comply with the standards
3. Meeting all the production demand of the product for the company
4. Diagnose and troubleshoot any problem of all the production plant
5. Report any requirement if there is any need of repair or installation of instrument to
the maintenance department
The figure below shows the hierarchy of this department lead by Mr. Hata bin Abu as the
General Manager of VBSB and then assisted by Mr. Azhar bin Salleh as the head of
department and then followed by the plant engineer and the supervisors.
PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT
4.1 Introduction
As mention above, this company produces several types of product and one of the products
is refined glycerine, focussing on this product, this chapter will explain how it is made.
First and foremost, the glycerine that is produced by this company is USP grade of refined
glycerine with 99.7% purity which is being used commonly for cosmetic, food processing and
pharmaceutical purposes as it comply with FDA’s (Food and Drugs Administration)
specification.
Next paragraph will be a brief explanation on how the refined glycerine with the aid of
process flow diagram (pfd) below.
Firstly the process start with crude glycerine either GMO (genetically modified organisms) or
non-GMO crude glycerine being pumped into the processing plant. For additional
information, GMO crude glycerine is novel organisms created in a laboratory using genetic
modification/engineering techniques with lower quality than non-GMO crude glycerine but
actually, GMO crude glycerine is cheaper. Source of crude glycerine is comes from biodiesel
plant from transesterification process within the company and also bought from other
oleochemical company within Malaysia and also from overseas with glycerine content
ranging from 78% to 82%. Normally, crude glycerine being pumped into the processing plant
at feed from 3 MT/hr to 4.5 MT/hr
Usage/importance:
- To creates vacuum condition for the plant to reduce the usage of energy
- To remove undesired content (moisture, fatty acid & ester/salt) from the yellow
glycerine being pumped into the substandard tank
How it works?
- The fact that this vapour scrubber is connected with all other units in plant, this is the
main reason why it is used to produce vacuum condition into the plant. Steam with
high pressure around 10bar/hour is being purged into the plant causing low pressure
created as the steam itself has a very high velocity. It will causing everything will
forced to be removed from the entire plant after sequence of injectors is turn on, it
can produce a vacuum condition up to 0 mbar which is 1000 times lower than
atmospheric pressure.
- It is also being used as a scrubber to treat the substandard of glycerine. The
scrubber column is heated at certain temperature which is higher than boiling point of
water to remove moisture and other undesired content (moisture, fatty acid &
ester/salt).
Usage/importance:
How it works?
- It is a simple distillation where the moisture and methanol will distillate at the top at
temperature around 100-100°C and the remaining glycerine will be pumped into the
next processing unit.
- The water vapour that being removed from the crude glycerine will be used as
process water.
-
Usage/importance:
- The main distillation column to distill the product and substandard and also remove
other undesired product (Fatty acid & ester, salt, moisture).
- Prepare product for next process.
How it works?
- Working just as same as other distillation column but the temperature is a little bit
higher around 150-160°C.
- Caustic soda is injected into the column about 0.5-2% of the feed rate to help
removing salt and fatty acid & ester.
- It will produce two types of glycerine at distillate and substandard.
- The distillate will be going on to next process while the substandard will be treated
and collected into the tank to be used again as feed material.
Usage/importance:
How it works?
Usage/importance:
How it works?
- Glycerine from the crude still will go to deodorizer column at temperature around
120-130°C.
- Odour and taste from the glycerine together with trace of undesired substance will be
removed from the deodorizer.
- The distillate will go to the scrubber while the bottom product which is deodorized
glycerine will be pumped to the bleacher for bleaching columns.
Usage/importance:
How it works?
- The glycerine will be going into the bleaching columns where the colour will be
removed from the product.
- There are three bleaching columns but only two will be used at a time.
- The bleaching columns contain activated carbon which is normally used to remove
colour in the product.
- Activated carbon works via a process called adsorption, whereby undesired
substances will be trapped inside the pore structure of the carbon substrate.
Before the product being pumped into the storage tank, it will be cool down below 70°C and
the will be packed into drums or will be transfer to the customer using tanker.
5.1 Introduction
Begin from 5th of December 2016, the trainee Mohamad Afie bin Rosman has been placed in
production department and supervised by Mr. Che Kamarudding bin Che Soh who is the
plant engineer for this company. As this company produced refine glycerine as one of their
major products, the trainee was assigned with a number of assignments which are related to
this process.
15 weeks in VBSB the trainee have been assigned with numerous assignments which more
in helping the engineer in the company doing some sorts of documentation, monitoring of
plants and etc. Below is the list of assignments that have been done by the trainee in the
span of 15 weeks.
No Task Assigned/Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
1 Induction
Learn on quality
2
assurance
6 Feed consumption
monitoring
7 Process parameters
monitoring
8 Drawings project
9 Glycerine quality
monitoring
SOP on filter bag and
10
cartridge
Throughout the 15 weeks of industrial training period, the activity that have been assigned to
the trainee are as follows:
i) Transfer data of the Fatty acid & ester and colour to Microsoft excel and present it in
graphical and table form.
Basically the purpose of this activity is to monitor on the quality of the product produced
which is Refine Glycerine (RG). Figure above shows the value of FAE for the product of both
plants. The product sample was taken every 2 hours and the results are tabulated and
presented as figure 8 above. This work was done by the trainee on daily basis from first until
forth week and the soft copy of the reports are saved in the CD provided in the reports.
Next, figure 9 above shows the value of colour alpha for the product of both plants. The
product sample was taken every 2 hours and the results are tabulated and presented as
figure above. This work was done by the trainee on daily basis from first until forth week and
the soft copy of the reports are saved in the CD provided in the reports.
This activity is to monitor the amount of raw material feed into the plant and make sure the
amount of raw material fed into the plant is balance with the totalizer reading of the feed. The
purpose is to make sure that the instruments used is giving the right information to the
operator in order to operate the RG plant. Example of daily reports is as below:
Date 1-Mar-17
Totalizer ME2 (1/3/17) No transfer of ME2 into Totalizer G1 (0800 HRS) 4921390
Totalizer ME2 (2/3/17) TK102 Totalizer G1 (0800 HRS) 5026100
TK102
To create a history of processing parameters (temperature & pressure) trends from 18 points
on the RG plants to be used as reference for troubleshoot any problems in the plant. The
trainee was assigned to start gathering all the data from the PLC (programmable logic
controller) which storing all the process parameters data of the RG plant from 1st October
2016 until 8th January 2017. The example is shown below.
Figure 11. The table and graph of the process parameters trend (Oct-16)
Figure 12. The table and graph of the process parameters trend (Jan-17)
This is one out of 18 parameters and the other 17 parameters was done by the trainee on
daily basis from first until forth week and the full soft copy of the reports are saved in the CD
provided in the reports.
Learn what an operator do and help them with their daily works like taking samples,
changing parts of pipeline, open or close valves and etc. and then give feedback to the
supervisor on what lesson can be learned from this activity.
This assignment was assigned by the project manager as actually there is a new plant
constructed at second facility in Tg. Langsat. On that time, the project was almost done and
there were some parts like pipes, flange, valves and fittings not being used and need to be
sort and count to send it back to the supplier. The trainee is assigned to sort, count and do a
report on this for the engineer.
For this activity the trainee was assigned to utilize the usage of a software called as
“autocad” to draw a new part of distillation column which may be installed at the plant as
second foot still to be used to recover content of glycerine in the residue.
Actually, filter bag and filter cartridge work as final filtering process before the refine
glycerine product being pumped into the product tank. This filter will remove black particles
where comes from the activated carbon in the bleacher. The trainee was assigned to do a
SOP on replacing the cartridge and filter bag by taking picture and show a correct flows of
the procedures.
Apart from the activity above, the trainee also was asked by his supervisor to do some
correlation of data. Thera are two correlations needs to be done.
140.0
120.0
100.0
80.0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52
Time
Data beyond the yellow line is current process value while before the yellow line is
process value after the plant was stopped for maintenance. This correlation helps the
engineer to pin point the problems occur in the processing plant.
PLANT G1
3.00 (Non-GMO)
E743
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
30-Nov-16 31-Dec-16 31-Jan-17 28-Feb-17
Date
Figure 20. Correlation between substandard (blue) and final product (red) for RG1
3.50 P746
PLANT G2
3.00
(GMO /
2.50 NON-
2.00 GMO)
E743
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
30-Nov-16 31-Dec-16 31-Jan-17 28-Feb-17
Date
Figure 21. Correlation between substandard (blue) and final product (red) for RG1
6.1 Introduction
During my time as a practical trainee here in Vance Bioenergy Sdn. Bhd, I have been
observing and recording on necessary details to complete my coursework. In this chapter I
will be going to give my personal opinion and recommendation related with this course and
maybe can be taken to improve the way this course will be held in future.
6.2 Recommendation
As my personal recommendation for the company is they need to have a proper guideline or
module for a practical student on what they need to do or prepare during their training in the
company. Any simple project should be okay maybe in research & development project,
project management or process monitoring which is only focus on one field of
activities/programs. This will help the student to be much organized and focus to completing
the task given. With this kind on project for sure the student can learn much deeper into the
field instead of just learn everything but only by it surface.
Next, as for Faculty of Chemical Engineering UiTM Johor Kampus Pasir Gudang, I think
from my behalf, the coordinator needs to give us more time to prepare for the final
presentation or maybe give us at least a week after the practical training period ends. With
only just two days for the student to be prepared and it is not enough and this need to be
mention as since this semester, the students are allowed to have their practical training
outside of Johor. It will takes more time for the students outside from Johor to sort everything
off and be prepared for the presentation. With longer time of preparation will help students to
be well prepared for the presentation. I hope this can be reconsidered in future in order to
give better practical training experience for next batches of FKK’s students.
All in all, the 15 weeks spent at production department and working with engineers has been
a unique and unforgettable experience for me. It is an eye opener to see how the real
industry works and exposure to both office work and on-field work was a welcoming practice.
To be working here with other different people from other departments teach me
uncountable soft and hard skills that cannot be learned in classroom.
Besides that, lessons that are very hardly to get in the classroom which to learn how the
process unit is working in real life and to see with very eyes all the equipment and instrument
have improve the my interest to be a better engineer in future.
I would also like to thank Faculty of Chemical Engineering UiTM Johor Kampus Pasir
Gudang for the opportunity to have this course which is CHE 353, Industrial Training. A big
gratitude also for the coordinator of this program, Sir Zaki bin Sukor and also Sir Meor
Muhammad Hafiz for helping me to complete and get placement for this course. Not to forget
of course for Vance Bioenergy Sdn. Bhd. For having me here and thought me on how it is to
be working in industry. For sure, the knowledge that I gained from this practical training will
help me to be better engineer in future.
Tank Reading
RG1
Date /3/2017 Tank Reading (TK )
Time Tank reading Delta Remarks Time Tank reading Delta Remarks
8:00 AM 0.00 8:00 PM 0.00
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8:00 AM
RG2
Date /3/2017 Tank Reading (TK )
Time Tank reading Delta Remarks Time Tank reading Delta Remarks
8:00 AM 0.00 8:00 PM 0.00
9:00 AM 0.00 9:00 PM 0.00
10:00 AM 0.00 10:00 PM 0.00
11:00 AM 0.00 11:00 PM 0.00
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8:00 AM 0.00