Concept of Islamic Leadership in Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas’s Philosophy

Islamic leadership is defined as a divine trust (amanah) from Allah, based on the Tauhidic paradigm of oneness of Allah that is focusing to serve HIM as HIS servant, while at the same time be the servant of Allah, perform the role of Khalefah (vicegerent) of Allah fully adheres to the Sunnah central to Islamic personality, characteristics and aklaq (Islamic moral and ethical) that was exemplified by the prophet (s.a.w), leading followers to the organization goals and to the straight path of the success in the Hereafter. It is based on this adopted definition that the paper tries to look into the notion from perspective of a Malaysian Muslim Philosopher to the core, Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, who believes in delivering amanah given to him, and at the same time perform the role of vicegerent of Allah. He suggests that lack of good leaders or rise of unqualified and false ones is one of the major problems of Ummah. Content analysis approach is engaged on both primary and secondary data collected. That is to say, it is a qualitative research in nature. The finding shows that the basis of Al-Attas’s concept of leadership is entrenched in Al-Qur’an and the tradition of the prophet in addition to his deep understanding on the Islamic Sciences such as Islamic theology, philosophy, and metaphysis and so on.

Catalytic Hydrocracking of Waste Plastics to Liquid Fuels

The worldwide production of plastic products has been increasing rapidly over the last few decades. This increase in plastic production has resulted in gigantic amount of plastic waste. Conventional methods for waste plastic management such as landfilling and incineration are susceptible to many environmental hazards that necessitate the need of recycling of plastic wastes. Chemical recycling methods are encouraged all over the world and hydrocracking is the most advantageous process among them. Hydrocracking occurs at low temperatures and converts waste plastics into high quality liquid fuel. In the present work, hydrocracking of a municipal waste model plastic mixture is studied using inhouse synthesized mesoporous and composite catalysts. Commercial zeolite USY (CBV720), ZSM-5 (CBV2314), and beta (CP811C-300) catalysts are used to prepare their respective micro-mesoporous composite catalysts. Al-SBA-15 and various Al-SBA-16 catalysts are synthesized with increased acidic character. Some mesoporous composite catalysts with zeolite nano-seeds are also prepared. The catalysts are characterized by using SEM, TEM, XRD, EDX, N2-BET, FTIR, and py-FTIR techniques. The results of characterizations showed the desired form of the catalysts. In order to screen out some of the catalysts, hydrocracking experiments with the model plastic mixture are conducted in a high pressure autoclave reactor. Initial experiments are performed at initial cold hydrogen pressure of 20 bar, 60 min residence time, feed to catalyst ratio of 20:1 (by wt.), and at various levels of temperature (350‒425°C). The products of the reactions are analyzed for conversion and yields of gas, oil (n-heptane soluble portion of liquid), and liquid. The oil produced is further analyzed with GC-FID and FTIR analysis. On the basis of conversion and selectivity towards liquid enriched with gasoline, five best performing catalysts are chosen for additional experimentation. These catalysts are then tested with HDPE and actual waste plastic mixture. Stability of these five supports is evaluated by using spent catalysts and regenerated spent catalysts from a previous run. Two catalysts performed remarkably well in all these experiments. The two catalysts are the composite of zeolite ZSM-5 (ZC-FP) and the composite of zeolite beta (BC27). The five best catalysts are then impregnated with 0.5wt% of platinum to prepare their respective bifunctional catalysts. The performance of these five platinum impregnated catalysts is then evaluated by hydrocracking the model plastic mixture at three reaction temperatures (325°C, 350°C, and 375°C). It is found that after platinum impregnation all the catalysts produced higher conversion and higher gaseous yield than that of their corresponding catalysts without impregnation. The quality of oil obtained over these platinum catalysts is much better with higher amounts of alkanes, lower amounts of aromatics, and lower quantities of unsaturated compounds. Among these impregnated catalysts PtBC27 produced the highest liquid yield with increased gasoline content. This catalyst is then tested with actual waste plastic mixture at 60 min residence time, 20 bar initial cold hydrogen pressure, feed to catalyst ratio of 20:1 (by wt.), and reaction temperature of 375°C. It is observed that this catalyst delivered 90.1wt% conversion and 68.6wt% liquid yield with gasoline content of 65.8wt%. In parallel reactions, ZC-FP catalysts is impregnated with different combinations of metals and tested with model plastic mixture at 325°C, 350°C, and 375°C. It is found that CoRuZC-FP catalyst produced the highest liquid yield at 375°C. However, its oil contained lower quantity of gasoline than that obtained over PtZC-FP and PtPdZCFP catalysts. The ZC-FP catalyst is also used to investigate the effect of change in initial cold hydrogen pressure, catalyst amount, and residence time at different reaction temperatures. This data is then used to study the kinetics of the hydrocracking reaction. The regression of the experimental data is carried out and a simple kinetic model is developed where the activation energy for the hydrocracking reaction is found to be 236.8 kJ/mol. Finally, a commercial hydrocracking unit is conceptualized and a process flow diagram of the process is developed.