[Jan 16, 2023] Congratulations to Do Nguyen Hoang Nga for her successful achievement in gaining Doctoral Scholarship from Vingroup Innovation Fund. The total scholarship value is up to 150 million VND per year.

[November 25-26, 2023] Congratulations to SPE's 18 new Bachelors and 06 new Masters that have officially graduated. Under the leadership and supervision of Associate Professor, PhD. Phung Kim Le, you have successfully completed your research thesis and had scientific publications in international journals. As you embark on your future endeavors, armed with your well-deserved diplomas, we hope you will always stand firmly on your feet. We sincerely appreciate your trust and companionship throughout the past year. May you enjoy good health, sustained motivation, and continue to achieve more remarkable triumphs.

[August 07th, 2023] During 3 months of summer 2023, SPE Lab welcomed 2 undergraduate students Nhat Anh and Hugo who are currently learning in USA and France to do an internship. The students involved in many LAB activities like doing research on plant extraction, quantification, bioactivities assay, exploitation of biomass to produce biochar for dye-contaminated wastewater. After internship, the students gain more experience in research, experimental, and presentation skills.

[March 20th, 2023] We had the opportunity to welcome Assoc.Prof. Dr. Takaaki Wajima, currently working at Chiba University, Japan. In the morning, Assoc.Prof.Dr. Le Thi Kim Phung, MSc. Do Nguyen Hoang Nga and the professor had a research discussion about recycling natural materials (agricultural biomass) into high-performance materials for many fields such as heat insulation, sound insulation, and wastewater treatment. Assoc.Prof. Wajima also had an academic exchange with Assoc.Prof. Nguyen Dinh Quan - Head of Biomass Laboratory.

In the afternoon, Assoc.Prof. Wajima shared his research about recycling paper sludge, rice straw, rice husk ash, bamboo and cedar bark into ash and biochar functionalized by H3PO4 , ZnCl2, NaOH and S and their applications in heavy metal removal.

The seminar attracted the attention of many undergraduate students, graduate students and PhD students as well as teachers in the faculty of Chemical Engineering. At the end of the seminar, the representative of the Faculty - Assoc.Prof. Nguyen Quang Long gave a commemorative gift to Assoc.Prof. Wajima.

[Jan 10, 2023] Assoc.Prof.Dr. Le Thi Kim Phung (Leader of SPE) was honored to receive the Best Innovation Award from the Hitachi Global Foundation in 2022. Award ceremony was held at Hitachi's headquarters in Tokyo (Japan) on January 10, 2023.

This year, the Asia Innovation Award includes 2 Best Innovation Awards; 03 Outstanding Innovation Awards and Consolation Awards (Encouragement Awards). SPE won the Best Innovation Award with the project "Advanced Bio-based Aerogels from Agricultural Waste for Water Treatment". This is our research result with the sponsorship of the Vingroup Innovation Fund (VINIF).

Please find more at Recipients of the 2022 (3rd) Hitachi Global Foundation Asia Innovation Award : The Hitachi Global Foundation (hitachi-zaidan.org) 

[December 2nd – 4th, 2022] We were honored to be one of the representatives of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology to participate in TECHFEST VIETNAM 2022 with the theme "Open Innovation Ecosystem - The Next Big Think". This is the largest annual event for innovative entrepreneurs with a scale of more than 300 exhibition booths, more than 8000 participants, holding multiple investment connection activities, and multilateral policy forums.

Attending the event, our research group received the opportunity to exchange and share our orientation to businesses on the idea of sustainable development and solutions for regeneration of agricultural by-products. Notable discussions include, TATA Coffee Viernam on the value chain of coffee grain, Hoa Duoc Thao company on biochar and silica-based products for fertilizers, and governmental departments including the Department of Science and Technology from Hậu Giang, Vũng Tàu, Sóc Trăng, Tây Ninh and universities such as Thủ Dầu Một University Eastern International University, International University - Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City,.... Most particularly, our group, especially Assoc.Prof. Phung Kim Le, was honored to introduce our innovative products and solutions to Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính and delegates.

Specifically, we have presented on processes to convert rice straw, pineapple leaf, coconut husk, sugarcane bagasse and water hyacinth into high-value products such as cellulose, lignin, silica, ash, biochar and aerogel with applications in heat and sound insulation material for construction, water treatment through the ability to adsorb dye, organic solvent and heavy metals. Furthermore, our group also provides the production technology for preparation of natural products, including chitosan, essential oil, and leaves extract for utilizations in pest control for plants and preservation of fruits before and after harvesting.

Having participated in the event is a major opportunity for us to approach practical demands of the industry as well as introducing technologies that were developed int he laboratory into the community. From this opportunity, our group hopes to increase cooperations with businesses, universities and research centers to expand research and development and transfer current technologies into larger scales. Our Sustainable Process Engineering group would like to give our most sincere gratitude towards all representatives who have visited our exhibition booths and we are looking forward to having the opportunity to cooperate with you all in the near future.

[31st October 2022] - The Hitachi Global Foundation Asia lnnovation Award is an award program that recognizes the outstanding achievements in Research & Development in the field of Science and Technology and encourage social implementation with the aim of contributing to the SDGs. It is our honor to receive this prestigious award from the Hitachi Global Foundation via the research theme Advanced Bio-based Aerogels from Agricultural Waste for Water Treatment. Many thanks to Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT), Vingroup Innovation Foundation - VinIF and our collaborators for great support. More information about the award can be found at here!

[22nd October 2022] - We would like to announce a book named that Pineapple and Its Wastes Utilisation - Towards Circular Bioeconomy and Sustainability (ISBN 978-967-0035-28-4) has been published by Universiti Putra Malaysia in October 2022. The book presents added value of agricultural by-products, especially pineapple waste. 

In this book, we contributed 01 chapter with title "Green Fabrication and Applications of Aerogels from Pineapple Leaf". The chapter was written by PhD. candidate Nga Hoang Nguyen Do (SPE-HCMUT), Assoc.Prof. Hai Minh Duong (NUS), and Assoc.Prof. Phung Kim Le (SPE-HCMUT). You may find the information of this book on at UPM Press – Penerbit UPM. We hope that what we write is useful and meaningful to the community.

[20th October 2022] - The happiest day made by boys of our LAB

[15th September 2022] - We had a formal meeting with representatives of Vingroup Innovation Foundation (VINIF) & Vin Bigdata, the research fund for the project PROCEDURE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE AEROGEL COMPOSITES FROM AGRICULTURAL WASTE, started from 05/2020 to 08/2022. We presented the project results with some outstanding outcome such as 04 international SCIE/Scopus papers (required 02 papers), 02 scientific reports at an international conference, 02 accepting valid applications for domestic patents, etc. The fund representatives also had sincere suggestions to expand our research results and transfer technology to businesses.

[September 2022] - SPE had a productive meeting with Director Christoph Kwintkiewicz from ANNIES Export NZ Ltd. and GIZ representatives on the biomass power plant project from cashew industry waste.

[August 2022] - SPE had a warm meeting with Dr. Chae Eun Yeo, Dr. Seyoon Hong and the research team from Institute for Advanced Engineering to update torrefaction research status and discuss more cooperation in the overseas project between Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT) and Institute for Advanced Engineering, Korea. The meeting had an attendance of Assoc.Prof. Phung Kim Le and Assoc.Prof. Kien Trung Pham representing the SPE group. We analyzed local biomass resources & characteristics in Vietnam and comprehensively discuss the cooperative R&D project solution development of sustainable biomass utilization technology.

[August 2022] - Bach Khoa Innovation (BKI) is the annual largest  innovative practice field in Ho Chi Minh City in order to support young entrepreneurs from the South area. The innovation competition was held by the Ho Chi Minh City  University of Technology in cooperation with the Ho Chi Minh City department of Science and Technology, and sponsorships from major companies. The aim is to raise the participants’ ideas and constantly develop them into reality as well as to promote the image of Vietnam's business startup ecosystem, ready to welcome cooperation in science and technology development, promoting new changes created by domestic partner.

ChicSafe, a research group supervised by Assoc.Prof. Phung Kim Le, has created safe, eco-friendly, non-toxic, non allergic, and affordable fibers as a  blend of nano chitosan grafted neem oil and pineapple fiber. Neem oil is grafted within chitosan in order to boost up the antimicrobial properties and even prevent certain viruses. Our fibers can be utilized to manufacture COVID-19 masks and other textile-based products for anti-bacteria and anti-viruses.

[July 1/2022] - SPE honorably welcomes Loc Troi Agricultural Research Institute - a member of Loc Troi Group company. In the warm and friendly atmosphere of the meeting, SPE presented the completion report for the project on cellulose production from rice straw, in collaboration with Loc Troi Group company. A representative for Loc Troi company, Mr. Nguyen Quan Thuan, highly appreciated our efforts in the development of the high feasibility pilot-scale process. Concurrently, a Head of SPE group, Assoc. Prof. Phung Kim Le also shared many recent achievements of the group in biomaterials and agriculture. After that, we discussed more vision, opportunities, and challenges of collaboration in the future. 

Topic: Environmental Impacts Due To The Industrial Activities

Plenary speaker: Professor Chiampo Fulvia, Department of Applied Science and Technology Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy

Time: Tuesday, Apr 26 2022, from 9AM to 11AM

Prof. Chiampo Fulvia gave a talk about the consequences of industrial activities including consumptions (water, fuel, land) and emissions (wastewater, solid waste, polluted gas, etc.) noise) to the environment. A number of approaches including chemical and biological methods to reduce and minimize these impacts were also discussed. After that, we had a few moments to discuss about the Professor's research directions, the study program at Politecnico di Torino, Italy with many opportunities for those who want to pursue MS and Ph.D. in the future.

During 1 week from April 25 to April 29, 2022, RPTC welcomed and happily worked with Professor Fulvia Chiampo, an expert in the field of soil remediation, waste treatment, mass and energy recovery from wastes and landfill biogas. She was with us on academic exchange from Department of Applied Science and Technology, Politecnico di Torino, Italy.

August-10, 2021. Our Professor, Dr. Phung Le received award from Vietnam National University for her contribution to research.