Keng Han Tng

PhD Candidate
Contact Details
T: +61-2-9385-4735
E: k.h.tng@unsw.edu.au
Add:

Room 922, Chemical Sciences Bldg
The University of New South Wales
Sydney, 2052, Australia

Profile

Education

  • Bachelor of Chemical Engineering (Hons) 2008-2011, UNSW, Sydney, Australia

Employment

  • Research assistant (Nov. 2011 – Mar. 2013), Water Research Centre/UNESCO Centre for Membrane Science & Technology, UNSW

Research Project

Research Project Title: Reliability of Water Recycling Systems

The reliability of a water recycling system is an essential factor in maintaining the continuous compliance with specific performance criterion such as environmental discharge consent requirements and water quality parameters. A water recycling system is considered to be completely reliable if there is no failure in process performance and that it meets the required effluent discharge standards and targets.

For mechanical reliability, the methods used to analyse this aspect of reliability are well established and understood. However, most of these methods are tedious and do not take into account system-system interactions. Till date, there has been little research on using mathematical modelling approaches to model water recycling systems’ mechanical reliability. The status quo of the current approaches allow for accounting for possible occurrences rather than predicting such events. In order for these traditional methods to cover all possibilities, many possibly unnecessary mitigatory actions would be implemented thus leading to complicated process designs and process inefficiency. Therefore, this highlights the lack of utilisation of mathematical modelling and its process optimisation potential.

For inherent reliability, there is no established standard method for analysing this aspect of reliability. Based on literature in the field of water treatment, modelling work can only evaluate one parameter and are modelled for removal efficiencies across individual process equipment only. Therefore, this further emphasizes the need for reliability modelling and how it can be used throughout a plant’s lifecycle to yield significant savings on capital and operating costs.

With the development of the proposed model, the reliability of a water recycling system can better predict the incidence of a non-compliant event through implementation of strategies derived from the simulation results while effectively managing and quantifying the risk of non-compliance by identification of critical equipment and their related failure.

Supervisors