Annual Report 2007

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Table of Contents PAGE THE INSTITUTE’S MISSION 2

DIRECTOR’S REPORT 3

WERRIBEE CENTRE FOR SUSTAINABLE WATER USE/INDUSTRY ADVISORY BOARD

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WERRIBEE CENTRE FOR SUSTAINABLE WATER USE/MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

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STAFF 6-7

RESEARCH ASSOCIATES 8-9

ADJUNCT STAFF 10-12

RESEARCH PROJECTS 13-30

EVENTS 31-32

CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION 33-35

PUBLICATIONS 2007 36-38

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The mission of the Institute for Sustainability & Innovation is to undertake research that:

♦ promotes and enables sustainable outcomes for industry and the community and

♦ develops and supports industries based on environmental technologies.

Key focus areas for the Institute are water, sustainable buildings, alternative energy and innovative foods.

Mission

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Message from Stephen

Midway through 2006, the Institute for Sustainability and Innovation (ISI) received Priority Research and Innovation Project (PRIP) funding to support the development of water related research at Victoria University (VU). This initiative remained a high priority throughout 2007, as the Werribee Centre for Sustainable Water Use was formed and developing the water research program was the main priority. We grew our water related research income from $200,000 in 2006 to over $1,000,000 in 2007. A similar growth occurred in ISI staff numbers (from 8 to 20), research projects (from 11 to 30) and in the participation of associates from VU faculties.

Growth in the water research capacity at VU has required an increase in space and facilities. The ISI has built a pilot plant facility that will be operational in the coming months, and has acquired an addi-tional 6 offices. We are also in the process of upgrading our analytical facilities in partnership with the Faculty of Health Engineering Science, which will provide a strong analytical capability for our water quality and water treatment research.

A new course structure for water industry technicians has been developed by VU TAFE in partnership with City West Water, which will offer learning and qualifications for technical officers over their careers (15-25 years). The development of this course was facilitated by ISI as part of its objective to estab-lish educational courses required by industry. Other programs that have commenced in 2007 include an intern program for undergraduate students to undertake research within ISI and the placement of VU undergraduate students in industry over the summer holidays. Both these initiatives will be formal-ised during 2008 and we anticipate growth in the number of students and industries taking part.

The Industry Advisory Board of the Werribee Centre for Sustainable Water Use was also established in 2007, and has grown to include 14 members as we enter 2008. The board proved a key mecha-nism for focusing our research effort and developing links between industry and VU researchers. We will further our engagement with industry in 2008 by also joining Water Quality Research Australia Ltd.

The ISI research focus in areas other than water was fragmented, and better cohesion of VU’s re-search effort in the areas of sustainable buildings and alternative energy is planned for 2008.

Associates from the Faculty of Health Engineers and Science (FoHES) had the greatest involvement within the ISI, leading the water resources, ICT, ecology and phase change processes research pro-grams. We are planning to consolidate these contributions during 2008 by increasing the number of research projects, and to increase our collaborative activities with the Faculties of Business and Law (FB&L), and Arts, Education and Human Development (FAEHD). Specifically we wish to increase our capacity in the research areas of social/behaviour change and the development of business frame-works to support management for sustainable outcomes.

We are looking forward to further growth in research activities in 2008.

Stephen Gray

Director’s Report

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Werribee Centre for Sustainable Water Use

Industry Advisory Board

REPRESENTATIVE ALTERNATE POSITION ORGANISATION

Terry Turney CEO Asia Nano Materials Pty Ltd

Peter Morgan Technical Planning Co-ordinator Barwon Water

Eddy Ostarcevic Manager Central Highlands Water

Geoff Gardiner General Manager City West Water

Dharma Dharmabalan Executive Manager Coliban Water

Stewart Burn Snr. Principal Research Scientist CSIRO

Rodney Dedman Manager Dept of Human Services

David Halliwell Research Director Dept of Primary Industries

Jo Beatty Director Dept of Sustainability & Environment

Cathy Bates Manager Dept of Sustainability & Environment

Stuart McConnell Director EPA Victoria

Paul Atherton Regional Dev. Officer Grampians Wimmera Mallee Water

Peter Scott General Manager Melbourne Water

David Gregory Research and Technology Melbourne Water

Greg Vero Eng & Tech Manager Orica Watercare

Paul O'Brien Training Manager Victorian Water Industry Assoc

Robert Franklin General Manager Western Water

Anthony Monaghan Manager Wyndham City Council

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Werribee Centre for Sustainable Water Use

Management Committee

REPRESENTATIVE ORGANISATION

Mr Max Coster Department of Sustainability & Environment

Mr Eddy Ostarcevic Central Highlands Water

Mr Anthony Monaghan Wyndham City Council

Professor Linda Rosenman Victoria University

Professor Ian Rouse Victoria University

Professor Stephen Gray Victoria University

Dr Gurjeet Gill Victoria University

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Staff

Professor Stephen Gray Director PhD (Melbourne) BE (Melbourne) Associate Professor Linda Zou Principal Research Fellow PhD (Monash) Masters (AIT, Bangkok) Bachelor (Beijing) Professor John Cary Professorial Research Fellow PhD (Melbourne) M.Agr.Sc., (Melbourne) B.Agr.Sc., (Massey) Professor Paul Boon PhD (Griffith) BSc, Hons (Sydney) Professor Colin Hocking Senior Research Fellow PhD (La Trobe) Dip. Ed (Melbourne)

Dr Gurjeet Gill Institute Manager PhD (New England) MBA (Massey) BSc(Hons) and MSc (PAU) Dr. Bo Zhu Research Officer PhD (Deakin) Masters (Zhejiang, China) BSc (Zhejang, China) Dr. Peter Sanciolo Research Officer PhD (Swinburne) B.App Sci (Swinburne) Dip.Ed (MCAE) Cert IV in Assessment & Workplace Training Ms Adva Zach-Maor Research Assistant Masters (Technion, Israel) BSc (Technion, Israel) Dr. Nicholas Milne Research Officer PhD (New South Wales) BE (New South Wales)

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Staff

Mr. Noel Dow Research Assistant B. App Sci (Victoria) Nitin Muttil Lecturer—ACME PhD (NUS, Singapore) Masters (Indian Inst Khas, India) BE (India) Kasup Munewara Research Assistant Masters (Victoria) BA (Sri Lanka) Dr. Lixia Li Research Assistant Visiting Academic Beijing University of Chemical Technology (China) Susan Derenko Visiting Research Assistant Germany

Lea Fielder Visiting Student Germany Mr. Xiaodong Dai Research Assistant Visiting Student China University of Petro-leum (China) Catherine Enriquez Administrative Officer Dr. Daoduo Xi Visiting Professor

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Research Associates NAME POSITION SCHOOL/DEPT FACULTY

Mr Shameem Ali Lecturer Hospitality, Tourism & Marketing Business & Law

Mr John Bentley Senior Lecturer Information Systems Business& Law

A/Prof Sukumaran Bhaskaran

Associate Professor Australian Food Mktg Centre Health, Eng & Sci

A/Prof Chandra Bhuta Associate Professor Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

Prof Stephen Bigger Associate Dean, Teaching & Learning

Faculty Administration Health, Eng & Sci

Mr Wayne Binney Lecturer Hospitality, Tourism & Marketing Business & Law

Dr Domenico Caridi Senior Lecturer Molecular Science Health, Eng & Sci

A/Prof Stephen Collins Assoc Prof Electrical Engineering Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Marlene Cran Research Officer (Nanotechnology)

Office for Research Health, Eng & Sci

Prof Terry DeLacy Professorial Fellow Hospitality, Tourism Research Business & Law

Dr Alison Duncan Lecturer, Microbiology Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Prof Mike Faulkner Professor Electrical Engineering Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Sarah Fraser Research Asst. Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Ms Emilija Gligorovska Project Officer Australian Food Mktg Centre Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Swati Baindur Hudson Senior Lecturer Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Sardar Islam Professor Centre for Strategic Economic Stud-ies

Business & Law

Mr Leo Jago Director Centre for Hospitality & Tourism Research

Business & Law

Dr Robert Jovanovic Lecturer Information Systems Business & Law

Dr Kandiah Jegasothy Senior Lecturer Applied Economics Business & Law

Dr Qin Jiang Senior Lecturer Electrical Engineering Health, Eng & Sci

Prof Akhtar Kalam Professor Electrical Engineering Health, Eng & Sci

Ms Rachael O’Keefe Project Officer Facilities Management Facilities

Dr Wee Sit Lee Senior Lecturer Electrical Engineering Health, Eng & Sci

Ms Rebecca Leshinsky Lecturer School of Law Business & Law

Dr Jun De Li Senior Lecturer Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

A/Prof David McCallum Deputy Dean Office of the Dean Arts, Education and Human Dev

Ms Sandra McKecknie Lecturer Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Stephanie Miller Senior Lecturer Management Business & Law

A/Prof Mary Millikan A/Professor Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Anne Ng Lecturer Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

Mr Euan Nichol Lecturer Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

Mr Barry Omahony A/Professor Hospitality, Tourism and Marketing Business & Law

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Research Associates NAME POSITION SCHOOL/DEPT FACULTY

Prof John Orbell Professor Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Ms Rohani Paimin Senior Lecturer Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci Mr Michael Pearlman Senior Lecturer Hospitality, Tourism & Marketing Business & Law

A/Prof Chris Perera A/Professor Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Eric Peterson Lecturer Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

Prof Michael Polonsky Professor Hospitality, Tourism & Marketing Business & Law

Mr Adrian Ramp Lecturer Information Systems Business & Law

Mr Randall Robinson Lecturer Biomedical Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Mr Vincent Rouillard Senior Lecturer Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

Prof Nagendra Shah Professor Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

A/Prof Nalin Sharda A/Professor Computer Science & Maths Health, Eng & Sci

Dr. Juan Shi Senior Lecturer Electrical Engineering Health, Eng & Sci

A/Prof Kees Sonneveld Manager Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Grant Stanley Head of School Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Xiao Su Lecturer Biomedical & Clinical Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Russell Swann Senior Lecturer Biomedical & Clinical Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Prof Graham Thorpe Professor Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Danh Tran Senior Lecturer Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Todor Vasilijevic Senior Lecturer Molecular Sciences Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Aladin Zayegh Assoc Professor Electrical Engineering Health, Eng & Sci

Dr Kevin Zhang Lecturer Architectural, Civil & Mechanical Eng Health, Eng & Sci

Prof Yanchun Zhang Professor Computer Science & Maths Health, Eng & Sci

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Adjunct Staff

Professor Stewart Burn has an international reputation in asset manage-ment and integrated water management and he is a stream leader within the CSIRO Division of Land and Water. His team undertakes research in integrated water management, asset management, water treatment and sustainable water systems. Stewart sits on advisory committees with Awwa Research Foundation (AwwaRF) and Water Environment Research Found-tion (WERF), two of the largest water research funders in the USA, and he regularly receives funding via these sources.

Dr. Dharma Dharmabalan is currently employed by Coliban Region Water Corporation as their Executive Manager Planning, in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. Previous to taking up this position, he served Central Highlands Water for 5 years and Barwon Water for 13 years. He is an active member with CRC for Water Quality and Treatment and currently Project Leader & Deputy Program Leader, for Distribution systems. His main research inter-ests include, Risk Management of Water Systems, Water Quality, Reuse & Recycling, application of Membrane Technologies and Operational Optimi-zation.

Dharma is also a certified Auditor for Drinking Water Quality Management Systems, with RABQSA International. He is an experienced professional working in the water industry for more than 25 years. He understands the research needs of the water industry and has sound knowledge of the leg-islative, policy and risks surrounding water and environmental related is-sues within the water industry

Dharma was appointed as an Adjunct Associate Professor with the Institute for Sustainability and Innovation.

Prof. Manh Hoang (PhD, FRACI) is a Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering. He is currently leading the Advanced Water Treatment project - Water for a Healthy Country Na-tional Research Flagship. His current R&D interests include environmental catalysis, industrial process and wastewaters, industrial emission control, membrane materials and process.

Prof. Hoang has made valuable contributions to number of strategic and commercial research projects with industry and has numerous publica-tions to his credit.

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Adjunct Staff

Dr. Syed Hussainy is a Limnologist. He graduated in India with Post-Graduation at Monash. He was a senior scientist with Melbourne Water for nearly 30 years. He has been a specialist lecturer on environment man-agement at Victoria University for the past 12 years and has over 48 publi-cations.

Eddy Ostarcevic has worked in the water industry for 24 years and been involved in the design, construction, operation and process optimisation of water, sewage and industrial waste treatment processes. Eddy owned and operated an engineering contracting business for over ten years and is cur-rently employed by Central Highlands Water as Treatment Manager re-sponsible for water and wastewater treatment operations and has a strong research and technology focus. Eddy is responsible for design and implementation of membrane processes with particular emphasis on brackish water desalination and producing bio-logically stable water using nanofiltration membranes. Eddy was awarded the inaugural Kwatye (Water) Prize in 2005 and that allowed him to evalu-ate DOC removal using nanofiltration membranes throughout Europe and the US during 2006. Victoria University appointed Eddy as an Adjunct Research Fellow in 2007 and he works within the University’s Institute for Sustainability and Innova-tion specifically with innovative membrane applications including vacuum membrane distillation, DOC removal and biofouling in nanofiltration mem-branes. Eddy is managing the membrane distillation project sponsored by the CRC WQ&T and GWMWater and currently enrolled in a PhD program at VU to develop real time integrity monitoring of reverse osmosis mem-brane systems for water reuse applications.

Associate Professor Vincent Pettigrove is the Principal Ecologist for Mel-bourne Water. He conducts, supervises and publishes research to under-stand the effects of pollution on aquatic ecosystems. He has published and presented papers in a broad range of areas, including: the effects of pol-luted sediments on indigenous macroinvertebrates, the effects of exotic fish on urban aquatic ecosystems, the development of bioindicators for urban water bodies, the ecology of platypus and is developing new methods to monitor the quality of runoff in stormwater drains. The outcomes of re-search are then fed into Melbourne Water activities to ensure that the most important threats to aquatic ecosystems are identified and the most appro-priate actions to manage these threats are taken. He has been a specialist lecturer in environmental management since 1992.

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Adjunct Staff

Dr. Ashok Sharma is a Senior Research Engineer with CSIRO Land and Water. He has 25 years of research, teaching and industrial experience in water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure planning and design; sus-tainability assessment; water quality; hydraulic modeling; total urban water cycle modeling and decentralized water/ wastewater systems. He is co-author of a book on ‘Design of Water Supply Pipe Networks’, 3 book chap-ters 13 journal and 20 conference publications.

Dr. Terry Turney is a senior scientific manager with extensive knowledge and experience of materials and manufacturing both within Australia and globally. His expertise is in strategic planning and complex project initiation and planning, technical operations and client liaison resulting in develop-ment of new products reaching the marketplace. He is acknowledged as a scientific leader in nanotechnology and materials science.

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Project Title: CSIRO Cluster Project

Project Period: 2007 -2010

Project Description: VU is leading a collaboration of 9 universities and CSIRO in investigating tech-nologies to reduce the energy required for desalination. VU overseas the scientific progress and pro-ject manages the program. VU’s research contribution to this program will concentrate on membrane distillation as a means to utilise waste heat for driving the desalination process. Jianhua Zhang has commenced his PhD studies in January 2008 as part of this program.

Funding/Partners: CSIRO

Personnel: Stephen Gray, Jun-de Li, Jianhua Zhang (VU)

Project Title: Guidance for Industrial Use of Recycled Water - Smart Water Project

Project Period: 2007 –2008

Project Description: This project is providing information to industrial clients regarding the opportuni-ties and challenges of accepting recycled water. A literature review/information package has been completed. It is available online at http://smartwater.com.au and clicking on “View Projects”, as well as the ISI website. A decision support framework, consisting of a quick scan tool and a qualitative multi-criteria analysis is being developed and will be trialled by industrial users in 2008.

Funding/Partners: Smart Water, CSIRO

Personnel: Nick Milne, Kevin Zhang, Stephen Gray (VU), Clare Diaper, Grace Tjandraatmadja, Rus-sell Taylor (CSIRO) and Darrell Reeve (Cleaner Production Australia)

Project Outcome: A literature review is available for industry use, which will assist companies that need to develop a WaterMAP. The decision support framework will also encourage the use of recy-cled water.

Project Title: Membrane Distillation (CRC Water Quality and Treatment)

Project Period: 2007-2008

Project Description: The project is testing new, commercially developed membrane distillation mem-branes to verify that membranes of higher flux are now available. The project is seeking to confirm that membranes of commercial interest are available for purchase. If this can be proven, then re-search on the process configuration of membrane distillation processes is warranted.

Funding/Partners: CRC Water Quality and Treatment, GWMWater

Personnel: Stephen Gray, Jun-de Li, Mikel Duke, Noel Dow (VU), Eddy Ostarcevic (CHW)

Research Projects Project Leader Professor Stephen Gray Director E-mail: stephen.gray@vu.edu.au Phone: 9919 8097

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Project Title: Organic Fouling of Low Pressure Membranes

Project Period: 2007

Project Description: Noel Dow, a Master’s student, investigated organic fouling of low pressure mem-branes using pure component systems. Noel studied both single organic component systems and multi-component systems and their fouling propensity on various commercial membranes. Noel showed that interactions between organic components and inorganic-organic interactions had a signifi-cant effect on organic fouling. His results supported the hypothesis that large molecular weight organic components provide significant fouling through cake filtration, but are readily backwashed. Fouling by a mixture of large molecular weight organic components and proteins results in rapid cake layer formation and increased adhesion to the membrane, thus limiting the effectiveness of backwashing.

Funding/Partners: Victoria University

Personnel: Noel Dow, John Orbell, Stephen Gray (VU)

Project Title: Small Scale Treatment Systems

Project Period: 2003 -2007

Project Description: This project had investigated the use of point of entry systems and point of use systems for delivery of potable water to small, remote communities. Three mobile water treatment sys-tems and two UF systems were trialled on a range of waters. Point of entry treatment was shown to be reliable for the production of potable water over a period of several months. UF filters were cost effec-tive when they serviced small communities in a centralised manner, while the use of media filtration with UV disinfection was a lower cost for an individual house. Further consideration of management of point of entry systems was considered necessary and an industry workshop will assist in generating discus-sion about this.

Funding/Partners: GWMWater, CRC Water Quality and Treatment, DSE, DHS, Central Highlands Wa-ter.

Personnel: Stephen Gray (VU), Eddy Ostarcevic (Central Highlands Water), Lea Fiedler (VU), Dharma Dharmabalan (Coliban Water)

Project Title: Hybrid Membrane Materials

Project Period: 2007 -2010

Project Description: A PhD student, Zongli Xie, commenced studies on the fabrication of hybrid mate-rials (inorganic-organic materials) as desalination membranes. This work is undertaken with CSIRO’s materials group, where Zongli works. The project will study the use of inorganic nanoparticles for con-trolling pore size and porosity in organic membranes.

Funding/Partners: CSIRO

Personnel: Stephen Gray (VU), Manh Hoang (CSIRO)

Research Projects

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Project Title: Membrane Integrity

Project Period: 2007 -2010

Project Description: Eddy Ostarcevic (CHW) has enrolled in a part-time PhD to investigated mem-brane integrity. The project will consider the integrity requirements for reuse applications and the wear mechanisms of membranes. The project will compliment the CRC Water Quality and Treatment project in this area.

Funding/Partners: Central Highlands Water

Personnel: Stephen Gray (VU), Eddy Ostarcevic (CHW)

Project Title: Membrane Distillation Review

Project Description: To review the state of membrane distillation and consider if this is a potentially viable treatment process.

Funding/Partners: GWMWater

Personnel: Adva Zach Maor, Stephen Gray (VU)

Project Outcome: Interest in using membrane distillation for increasing water recovery through RO plants

Research Projects

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Dr Zou’s research focuses on innovative water treatment technologies. She has established a di-verse research portfolio that addresses both applied research such as the enhancement of water reuse and fundamental research in the areas of nano materials and membranes. Dr Zou and her research group strive to deliver high quality research outcomes and achieve national and international reputation in these areas.

Research group members:

Dr Peter Sanciolo Dr Bo Zhu Mr Noel Dow Mr Xiaodong Dai (Visiting Academic) Dr Lixia Li (Visiting Academic) Projects undertaken by the research group in 2007 are as follows:

• Using Membrane Pilot Plant to Produce Low Salt and High Nutrient Recycled Water for Agriculture Irrigation-Smart Water Project • Removing Colour from Recycled Water by Photocatalysis and Advanced Oxidation Processes-Smart Water Project • Low Cost Activated Carbon Electrosorptive Deionisation Technology • Degradation of Low Level Pesticides in the Fruit and Vegetable Cooling Water by Photocatalysis Process • Improving the Porous Carbon Electrodes as Alternative Desalination Process • Modification of Polymer Membranes to Reduce the Bio-fouling • Liquid Phase Adsorption of NDMA by Porous Adsorbents

PROJECTS

Project Title: Using Membrane Pilot Plant to Produce Low Salt and High Nutrient Recycled Wa-ter for Agriculture Irrigation

Project Period: July 2006-present

The project investigates and demonstrates that using a nanofiltration (NF) membrane and a Reverse Osmosis (RO) membrane in sequence can produce recycled water with useful levels of nutrients and other ions. The recovery of nutrient and useful ions from the wastewater makes NF-RO treated recy-cled water an attractive option for agricultural irrigation. The technology also has the potential to save energy due to the lower energy requirements of NF elements over RO elements. A MF-NF-RO pilot plant has been designed and built at Victoria University. The MF plant removes the suspended solids in the feed water, as pre-treatment of NF-RO membranes. The NF is an intermediate stage that aims to partially separate and enrich the monovalent salt (Na+) from the divalent ions (Ca2+. Mg2+, etc). Four commercial nanofiltration membranes were tested using the pilot plant and treated effluent from WTP as feed water. The aim of these tests was to find the operating conditions that would achieve the low-est possible sodium rejection, and maintain a reasonable high rejection of divalent ions. It was found that the addition of polyelectrolyte in the feed water can enhance such separation. The RO is used as a final stage of filtration to remove sodium ions.

Research Projects Project Leader Associate Professor Linda Zou Principal Research Fellow E-mail: linda.zou@vu.edu.au Phone: 9919 8266

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The permeate from RO which has a low ion content is blended with the rejections from NF, to reduce the salt content of the product water. The multiple elements system is modelled based on the experi-mental results of single NF and RO element plant. The modelling showed that product water with so-dium adsorption ratio less than 3 and the sodium levels less than 100mg/L can be achieved with MF-NF-RO treatment of WTP wastewater. This treatment system has the potential to be used as an on-site treatment unit to promote sustainable water reuse in agriculture irrigation and hydroponics vegetable growth. The obtained results are also useful for designing a scale up pilot plant for recycling water at WTPs.

Funding/Partners: Smart Water Grant

Personnel: The chief investigator of this project is Linda Zou, the research officer is Peter Sanciolo. Other people involved are: Stephen Gray, Greg Leslie (UNSW), Daryl Stevens (Arris) and Mohammad Helmy (CH2M Hill).

Project Outcome:

• one article has been accepted with minor revision for publication by Chemosphere (impact factor 2.442); • 4 major milestone reports have been submitted to Smart Water Fund and approved • one poster presentation has been made at Water Reuse and Recycling Conference 2007 • More journal articles are being drafted targeting high impact journals Project Title: Removing Colour from Recycled Water by Photocatalysis and Advanced Oxida-tion Processes-Smart Water Project

Project period: May 2006- present

Project Description: Colour and non-biodegradable trace organics present in the treated wastewater from STPs have negative impact on the public acceptance of recycle water. Coloured recycle water will be perceived as dirty and not fit for purpose even though it is. Since most organic compounds are re-sistant to the conventional chemical and biological treatments, Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOPs) are being studied as an alternative to the traditional methods and will probably constitute the best op-tion in the near future. AOPs are based on the generation of very reactive species such as hydroxyl radicals (OH•) that oxidize a broad range of organic pollutants quickly and non-selectively (1). In the present study the treatment efficiency of different AOPs (UV/O3, UV/TiO2 and UV/TiO2/O3) were com-pared for the reduction of color and trace organics remained in the treated effluent using a laboratory scale recirculation coronation and photocatalytic system. Color, A254 (the organics absorption at the wavelength of 254 nm), and total organic carbon (TOC) were analysed to assess the process effi-ciency. The effects of ozone dose, circulating flow rate, UV intensity, ozone input flow rate, ozonation procedure, as well as UV light source on the process efficiency were also investigated. The color re-moval rate significantly increased with increasing O3 dose. The co-treatment of ozonation and photo-catalytic oxidation increased TOC removal rate by nearly 50 % compared to the process which ozona-tion was used as a pre-treatment for photocatalysis. This was due to the synergistic effect between photocatalysis and ozonation.

Apart from AOP, adsorption method using activated carbons was also investigated for colour removal from recycled water. TiO2 nano particles were loaded on the surface of the granular activated carbons (GAC), this feature enables the GAC to be regenerated by UV irradiation without the thermal treatment. The adsorption results using a fixed bed column were reported, and the regeneration potential of the activated GAC were also investigated.

Research Projects

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Funding/Partners: Smart Water Grant

Personnel: The chief investigator of this project is Linda Zou, the research officer is Bo Zhu.

Project Outcome:

• One article has been published on the Journal of Advanced Oxidation Technologies in 2007 • One article has been published and available online from 19 November 2007. Journal of Photochem-

istry and Photobiology. • 4 major milestone reports have been submitted and approved by Smart Water Fund Project Title: Low Cost Activated Carbon Electrosorptive Deionisation Technology

Project period: 2006-2007

Project Description: This project investigated the electrosorptive deionisation process and developed it into a system for desalination. Experiments have been conducted in a reactor system and it was found that the activated carbon has some deionisation capacity due to its very high adsorption capacity and conductivity, so it can be used as an alternative electrode material. Surface modifications have been made to the activated carbon material to improve its deionisation performance. This preliminary study demonstrated that activated carbon granules have the potential to be the cost effective electrode materi-als for desalting from brackish water.

The improvement of the electrosorption efficiency can be achieved by surface modification by chemicals and metal oxide nano particles.

Funding/Partners: VU Internal Grant

Personnel: The chief investigator of this project was Linda Zou (VU), the research officer was Daoduo Qi (VU).

Project Outcome:

• One article has been accepted by Desalination (Impact factor: 0.917) in June for publication in 2007 • An oral presentation has been presented at International Desalination Association (IDA) World Con-

gress on Desalination and Water Reuse 2007 in October 2007 Project Title: Degradation of Low Level Pesticides in the Fruit and Vegetable Cooling Water by Photocatalysis Process

Project Period: 2006-2007

Project Description: The trace level of organic pesticides are present in the fruit and vegetable wash-ing and cooling water, the regulation requires that the water needs to meet the drinking water standard, and any trace level of pesticides and organic matters need to be removed before the water can be re-used. This project investigated the effectiveness of using photocatalysis and advanced oxidation proc-ess to destruct the low level pesticides in the fruit and vegetable washing and cooling water, so that the treated water can be safely reused. The experimental trials found that two model pesticides are not only effectively degraded but also most of them are totally mineralised.

Funding/Partners: VU Internal Grant

Personnel: The chief investigators of this project are Linda Zou and Graham Thorpe (VU), the research officer was Noel Dow (VU).

Research Projects

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Project Title: Improving the Porous Carbon Electrodes as Alternative Desalination Process

Project Period: 2007-present

Project Description: The project investigates using porous carbon electrodes in electrosorption as an efficient and energy-saving water desalination technology. Electrosorption only needs to operate at low voltage and is easy to regenerate the electrodes. The current carbon electrodes are found to be defi-cient in performance because it was not efficient in desorption process. This project aims to overcome this deficiency and develop carbon electrodes with better performance.

Funding/Partners: VU Internal Grant

Personnel: The chief investigators of this project are Linda Zou and Gayle Morris (VU), the research officer is Lixia Li (VU).

Project Outcome:

• An ARC Linkage application has been re-submitted in November 2007 • A VU “Near Miss” grant was received in 2007 • A submission has been accepted for oral presentation at International Conference of Nanoscience

and Nanotechnology (ICONN) in February 2008 • An article was submitted to Water Research and is under review Project Title: Modification of Polymer Membranes to Reduce the Bio-fouling

Project Period: 2007-present

Project Description: The project investigates the approach to improve the performance of a polymer membrane by reducing the bio-fouling on its surface. Titanium dioxide nano particles and other nano materials are added into the polymer matrix to cast the composite TiO2/Polymer membrane. The poten-tial antibacterial and oxidative effects of the additives are tested in a cross-flow membrane testing cell set up. The characteristics of the membrane will be used to study the membrane structure and its foul-ing potential.

Personnel: The chief investigators of this project are Linda Zou and Rohani Paimin (VU), the research assistant was Dayne Collins (VU).

Project Title: Liquid Phase Adsorption of NDMA by Porous Adsorbents

Project period: 2007-present

Project Description: Low level NDMA can be formed as by-product of disinfection process using chlo-rine or chloramines in the water treatment processes. It is classified by the US EPA as a toxic pollutant. Both biological water treatment and membrane (RO) cannot effectively remove it. This project aims to study the interaction of NDMA molecules with a number of solid adsorbents. Through understanding the interaction of the NDMA and adsorbents, the adsorption can be optimised.

Funding & Partners: VU Internal Grant

Personnel: The chief investigators of this project are Linda Zou and John Orbell (VU), the research as-sistant is Xiaodong Dai (VU).

Research Projects

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Project Title: Promoting Behavioural Change in Household Water Consumption.

Project Period: 2007 - present

Project Description: The research will assess the impact in behavioural change models and the impact of direct feedback on water use and water conservation behaviour of household consumers. The research should help families make changes to their everyday habits, so they use less water in the home.

Funding/Partners: The project is funded by a Smart Water grant and is being undertaken in part-nership with URS Australia.

Personnel: John Cary (VU)

Project Outcome: Currently at data gathering stage.

Project Title: Hospitality Resource Recovery Project.

Project Period: 2007 - present

Project Description: This project aims to significantly improve resource recovery, especially of glass, in the hospitality sector. The project should boost glass recovery, and will develop a busi-ness case for the hospitality industry on the benefits of using the BottleCycler machine for recover-ing glass resources as a part of waste recycling. Skills and approaches for this project include pro-ject evaluation, economic analysis and business case development. The project involves two month rolling trials of bottle crushing systems at ten venues.

Funding/Partners: National Packaging Covenant, Packaging Stewardship Forum of the Australian Food & Grocery Council, BottleCycler, Fosters, Lion Nathan, Melbourne City Council and the Aus-tralian Hotels Association.

Personnel: John Cary (VU)

Project Outcome: Still in progress.

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Research Projects Project Leader Professor John Cary Professorial Research Fellow E-mail: john.cary@vu.edu.au Phone: 9919 5481

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Project Title: Development of Indicators and Methods for Monitoring Impacts of Tourism on Aquatic Ecosystem Health. Project Period: 2006-2008

Project Description: Tourism is one of the country’s largest expert earners, and natural attractions are the major reason for overseas visitors coming to Australia. Aquatic systems are a key attraction, given that ~ 70% of Australia is arid or semi-arid. Despite these two factors, little is known of the im-pacts of recreation and tourism on natural resources, nor on the effect of degraded ecological systems on the visitor experience.

Funding/Partners: CRC for Sustainable Tourism, Gold Coast, $220,000

Personnel: Paul Boon (VU); Prof Angela Arthington and Dr Wade Hadwen (Griffith University)

Project Outcome: The project has developed and currently is in the process of testing a suite of methods for assessing the impact of recreation on aquatic systems in south-eastern Australia. Field-work progress has been restricted by the bushfires and floods that took place in eastern Victoria in 2006-2007. Field work has since largely moved to south-eastern Queensland, but the recent floods there have also compromised many of our field sites. Nevertheless, a manuscript has just been sub-mitted to Annals of Tourism Research on the findings to date and we will endeavour to find and use new sites in 2008.

Figure 1: The 2006-2007 bushfires that raged across southern Australia destroyed most of the Victoria field sites in this project. The photograph above shows one of the burnt-out field sites along the Macalister River in eastern Victo-ria.

Research Projects Project Leader Professor Paul Boon Email: paul.boon@vu.edu.au Phone: 9919 2210

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Project Title: Causes of Mortality Among Ethnic Rock Fishermen.

Project Period: 2007-2008

Project Description: This is a small project sponsored by Parks Victoria. Approximately 10 rock fish-erman die each year off the Australia coast and Vietnamese anglers are disproportionately repre-sented in the fatalities. The project seeks to determine why this ethnic group suffers such a high rate of death while rock fishing.

Funding/Partners: Parks Victoria (through CRC for Sustainable Tourism, Gold Coast, $10,000)

Personnel: Paul Boon (VU), Dr Martin Fluker (VU: Hospitality, Marketing and Tourism)

Project Outcome: This project is ongoing. The literature review has been completed and field work has commenced. Focus-group interviews with rock fishermen will start in early-mid 2008.

Project Title: Wetland Rehabilitation: Rehabilitation of Gippsland Lakes Wetlands Degraded by Multiple Stressors (Altered Water Regime, Salinity, And Exotic Species).

Project Period: 2003-2007

Project Description: The Gippsland Lakes, a mosaic of coastal lagoons and wetlands partly isolated from the ocean by a series of depositional barriers, is the largest navigable water body in Australia. A multi-disciplinary R&D project commenced in 2003 to rehabilitate Dowd Morass, one the largest of the Ramsar-listed wetlands in the Gippsland Lakes complex. This 1,500 ha wetland has been flooded for nearly three decades and experiences episodically high (up to 20 dS m-1) salinities. Landscape-scale manipulations of water regimes, combined with community-based revegetation trials, were assessed as ways of rehabilitating the wetland. Both activities were embedded within an adaptive management approach that involved a suite of regional natural-resource management agencies, Federal Govern-ment funding agencies, and community and other stakeholder groups.

Figure 2: Dowd Morass is one of the largest of the brackish-water wetlands of the Gippsland Lakes Ramsar site in eastern Victoria. The main vegetation in the wetland is Swamp

Research Projects

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Paperbark (Melaleuca ericifolia) but, as shown above, the condition of paperbark trees has declined markedly in response to secondary salinization, nutrient enrichment and an inappropriate water re-gime. The paperbark trees provide important nesting and roosting sites for colonial breeding birds such as ibis and cormorants.

The project entailed a mix of laboratory, glasshouse, mesocosm and field analyses. The field work was often undertaken by canoe, as the wetland was commonly too deep for safe wading and large expanses of vegetation had to be surveyed on each field trip.

Funding/Partners: Land and Water Australia Innovations Programme, West Gippsland CMA, Depart-ment of Sustainability and Environment, Gippsland Coastal Board, Esso, BHP Billiton, Field & Game Australia, Gippsland Water. $720,000

Personnel: Paul Boon (VU: Chief Investigator), Dr Kay Morris and Dr Elisa Raulings (Monash Univer-sity: post-doctoral fellows). A range of PhD and BSc(Hons) students were associated with the project but were not funded directly by it: PhD students include Randall Robinson, Matt Hatton and Jacqui Salter

Project Outcome: Scientific outputs from the R&D project are currently being published in the peer-reviewed literature. In terms of better managing high-value aquatic systems such as the Gippsland Lakes Ramsar site, the project showed that:

• involvement of the regional community was essential for the conduct of the project and to maxmise its outputs; • anecdotal information regarding the condition of the wetland, the main factors responsible for its ecological degradation, and historical changes in floristics and vegetation communities, were not entirely reliable, consistent or accurate. The degree to which scientific knowledge is used in managing wetlands is, however, still unclear; • landscape-scale hydrological manipulations of the type and magnitude required to understand environmental-flow requirements are fraught with risk; and • differences in objectives among the various institutions and stakeholders add a level of complexity to project management that was unexpected and perhaps unresolvable.

Research Projects

Figure 3: Field work in Dowd Moras was often undertaken by canoe. This photograph shows part of the research team about to embark on vegetation surveys in winter 2006.

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In addition to publications in the scientific literature, we have produced two technical handbookss on outcomes of the project. The first, printed in 2005, was a 16-page handbook that outlined the ap-proaches used in the project: the second one, printed in 2007 and extending to 40 pages, summarised all the project findings in an easy-to-understand layout. Printed copies can be obtained from Professor Boon via email at paul.boon@vu.edu.au.

Research Projects

Figure 4: A 40-page technical handbook was produced in 2007 to communicate the findings of the wetland rehabilitation project to wetland and floodplain managers in order to help them better man-age aquatic systems in south-eastern Australia.

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Project Title: An Investigation into the Feasibility of Applying Magnetic Particle Technology to the Cleansing of Oiled Wildlife in the Field.

Project Period: 2006-2008

Project Description: Oil contamination of wildlife is an ongoing problem worldwide. Traditional meth-ods for cleansing oiled wildlife are based on the use of detergent and warm water. Although this has now been developed to a high degree by rehabilitators, with many successful outcomes, problems still remain. One such problem is that this method cannot be applied to the removal of the bulk of contami-nation upon first encounter (in the field), since the equipment is not readily portable. Researchers at VU have demonstrated, in principle, that oil-absorbing magnetic particles are highly effective in dry cleaning oil from plumage and fur by a process of “magnetic harvesting”. This technology has the po-tential to be highly portable and could address the problem of removing the bulk of the contamination upon first encounter – hence, greatly improving survival chances. This would be particularly advanta-geous when highly toxic contaminants are involved such as fuel oil. This project has looked at the lo-gistics of applying “magnetic cleansing” in the field.

Funding/Partners: The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA). The Phillip Island Nature Park (PINP), Victoria University (VU), $60,000.

Personnel: Prof. John Orbell (VU); Dr. Hien Van Dao (ISI) – Postdoctoral Fellow employed on the project, Dr. Lawrence Ngeh (VU) and Prof. Stephen Bigger (VU).

Project Outcome: The final report on this project has been submitted in March, 2008. Through very demanding experimental work, carried out by postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Hien Van Dao, the use of this technology in the field for a “quick wash”, i.e. for the removal of the bulk of contamination upon first encounter, has been shown to be feasible, both logistically and economically. Based on this project, Professor John Orbell and Dr. Lawrence Ngeh delivered two oral presentations at the 9th International Effects of Oil on Wildlife Conference, Monterey, California, U.S.A., June 25-29, 2007, entitled: “The potential for the application of magnetic particle technology to wildlife rehabilitation in the field” and “A quantitative assay for relative pre-conditioner effectiveness in wildlife rehabilitation”. These were very well received and many important contacts were made. The latter presentation is an example of how this project has facilitated progress in related research and this assay has now been provisionally pat-ented. Other such spin-offs include the use of this technology to remove oil from rock and foreshore (Orbell, JD, Dao, HV, Kapadia, J, Ngeh, LN, Bigger, SW, Healy, M, Jessop, R. & Dann, P 2007, ‘An investigation into the removal of oil from rock utilising magnetic particle technology’, Mar. Pollut. Bull. vol. 54, pp. 1958-1961.)

Research Projects Project Leader Professor John D. Orbell Email: john.orbell@vu.edu.au Phone: 9919 8066

Figure 1: Professor Orbell and Dr. Ngeh - magnetically cleansing . Figure 2: A “third generation” magnetic har-

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Project Title: Climate-Corrected Urban Water Use – Funded by Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, Faculty of Health, Engineering and Science, and CSIRO Water for a Healthy Country Flagship Project Period: 2007 to current

Project Description: Understanding the influence of climate on water consumption is of prime impor-tance to water utilities to evaluate the effectiveness of water conservation programs and/or to track water use against the consumption targets specified in the operating licenses. Water utilities use cli-mate-correction or weather-adjustment to identify and quantify the influence of the weather on urban water use. This research project aims to identify knowledge gaps in the current methodology for esti-mating the climate-corrected water use and to develop an improved methodology. The results of the project will enable water planners to estimate the water savings of water conservation programs.

The project was started in September 2007. The student who is working on this project is currently working on her PhD candidature proposal.

Contact: Nitin Muttil; Nitin.Muttil@vu.edu.au; ph 9919 4251

Project Outcome: In progress,

Project Title: Investigation of Deterioration Models for Stormwater Pipe Systems:—PhD project (thesis under examination)

Project Period: Mar 2006 to Dec 2007

Project Description: The deterioration of service infrastructure was a concern in Australian in recent times, where stormwater drainage pipes in Australia were rated as ‘poor condition’. The information on current and future condition of stormwater pipes is therefore important for making decisions on when and how to carry out maintenance and rehabilitation. As the major objective, this study attempted to develop separately structural and hydraulic deterioration models that can predict the condition changes of pipe population and condition changes of individual pipes as compared to the ‘like-new’ condition. The outcomes of the models can be used for planning annual budget and prioritizing re-pairs. Furthermore, this study aimed to identify the significant factors that affect the structural and hy-draulic condition of stormwater pipes, which could support design and operation of stormwater pipes.

Project Outcome: Six papers by Tran D.H et al. 2007 paper is listed in the back.

Contact: Anne Ng; anne.ng@vu.edu.au: ph 9919 5507

Research Projects Project Leader Professor Chris Perera Email: chris.perera@vu.edu.au Phone: 9919 4729

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Project Title: Decision Support System for Management of Urban Stormwater Drainage Net-work - PhD project

Project Period: 2006 to current

Project Description: Most urban drainage infrastructure in Australia have been built during the pe-riod from 1940 to 1970. They have been designed to carry runoff from catchments with low density residential or commercial areas, prevailing at the time. With rapid development and urbanisation dur-ing the last 5 decades, the catchment characteristics have changed drastically, especially the increase in impervious area which has resulted in increased runoff from the catchments. In addition, the pipes have deteriorated both structurally and hydraulically. One major issue facing local government coun-cils today is how to identify the upgrade needs of the network to meet the current service levels ex-pected by the residents and to prioritise them to match the limited funds available. This research pro-ject aims to develop a DSS for the management of urban stormwater drainage networks incorporating infrastructure maintenance, rehabilitation and upgrade needs as identified by stormwater pipe deterio-ration models, hydrological and hydraulic models, economic factors, social and legal aspects, and the effect of urbanisation.

Project Outcome: Abeykoon, S.B. and Perera, B.J.C. A Framework for Prioritisation of Renewal and Upgrade Projects of Urban Stormwater Drainage Networks, International Public Works Conference, Cairns, Australia, August 26-30, 2007.

Project Title: Sensitivity of Yield Estimation of Urban Water Supply Systems — PhD project.

Project Period: 2005 to current

Project Description: Yield plays a key role in the management of urban water supply systems. It is therefore important for water authorities to accurately estimate the yield. Sensitivity analysis will iden-tify the key variables used in yield estimation, allowing water authorities to improve the knowledge of those variables (or input factors) and thus to improve the confidence and reliability of the system yield. In this study, various sensitivity analysis techniques are used to identify, rank and quantify most influ-ential input variables, or group of variables, affecting the yield. Interactions and non-linearity of input variables are also be considered in this study. A hypothetical urban water supply system and the Bar-won urban water supply system are used as case studies.

Contact: David King; David.King@vu.edu.au ph 9919 5356 Project Outcome: 2 papers in 2006. One CD in 2007( listed at the back).

Research Projects

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Project Title: Water Reclamation Desalination Technologies: A Techno-Economic Study for Centralised and Decentralised Options - MEng project, City West Water

Project Period: 2005 to 2007

Project Description: Water harvesting from alternative sources including seawater and groundwater through desalination is growing due to scarcity of existing water resources. Recently, the industrial wastewater desalination has also been considered as a water reclamation option for industrial, agricul-tural and even drinking water applications. In this project, a decision support framework was devel-oped to select the best desalination technology for treating and reclaiming industrial wastewater, con-sidering desalination at central locations such as at wastewater treatment plants (i.e. centralised op-tion) and at the sources (i.e. decentralised option). The framework focused on technological and cost aspects using existing knowledge and constraints, but considered only limited social and environ-mental issues. The viability of the framework was demonstrated through several case studies of the two options.

Funding: City West Water

Project Outcome: MEng thesis was submitted in August 2007 and is currently under examination.

Project Title: Multi-Objective Optimal Operation of Urban Water Supply Systems - PhD project

Project Period: 2003 to 2007

Project Description: Conflicting objectives and expectations of various stakeholders especially dur-ing extended dry periods has led to increasing interest in the consideration and resolution of multiple objectives in terms of social, economic, environmental and supply sustainability perspectives in the management of urban water supply systems. Incorporating stakeholder preferences in the decision making process, this study used a multi-objective approach to evaluate alternative operating rules for urban water supply systems, in particular for the Melbourne water supply system. Outranking methods, in particular PROMETHEE (and its computer software tool Decision Lab 2000) was used in the study. Preference elicitation of various stakeholders (i.e. resource managers, water users and environmental-ists), and decision analysis with respect to various performance measures was a major part of this study.

Project Outcome: PhD was completed in July 2007 and was examined. All three examiners had rec-ommended the candidate be awarded PhD subject to minor modifications to the thesis (which also had been done and submitted to the University Postgraduate Committee). Three papers in 2006.

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Project Title: Drought Forecasting for the Management of Water Resources in River System (PhD project)

Project Period: May 2007 to current

Project Description: Early forecasting of future drought conditions during continuing dry periods can assist water resources managers to identify strategies for preventing river level dropping to an unsafe level. Currently, Melbourne Water Corporation is making decision based on current climatic conditions to trigger restrictions for licence diverters within the basins. They are planning ahead for managing water resources in the river by working out the risk for next two weeks based on seven days average streamflow, current daily rainfall and the monthly rainfall conditions. However, they are unable to fore-cast future drought situations as current technique is designed for a very short time scale. It creates difficulties to plan ahead for the management of water resources in the existing river systems, which is very important for long term drought risk management. Therefore, development of a drought forecast-ing tool will help to improve the current management technique. The proposed drought forecasting tool will allow MW to better manage of water resources in the river during the future dry conditions. Such tool consists of two components, one is drought index development and other is development of a drought forecasting model (DFM).

Project Outcome: A working paper on “A Review of Drought Indices: Assumptions, Attributes and Limitations from Australian Perspective”.

The PhD student is currently working on his PhD candidature proposal.

Contact: Anne Ng; anne.ng@vu.edu.au: ph 9919 5507

Project Title: Continued Development of REALM Water Supply Planning Software Tool — A Collaborative Project with Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria

Project Period: 1997 to current

Project Description: Significant effort is spent on continued development and enhancement of REALM water supply simulation software, to suit user needs. REALM simulates the harvesting and bulk distribution of water resources within a water supply system, and models the water storage be-haviour due to various ‘what if’ scenarios such as increasing environmental flows. Network linear pro-gramming is used to allocate water within the supply systems. REALM has been adopted as the mod-elling standard for water supply planning and management in Victoria, and is extensively used also in Western Australia and South Australia, and to a lesser extent other states of Australia. REALM soft-ware and the three user manuals are available free of charge from the website http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/vrosite.nsf/pages/water-surfacemod.

Project Outcome: Continuous update of REALM software and user manuals Training of 40 water engineering professionals to use REALM through 2-3 day workshops

Research Projects

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Project Title: Data-Driven Modelling of Harmful Algal Blooms

Project Period: Completed in 2007

Project Description: This project dealt with the prediction of harmful algal blooms (HABs) (or red tides) in the coastal waters of Hong Kong using data driven modelling techniques like artificial neural networks (ANN) and genetic programming (GP). Since the ecological processes in coastal waters are extremely complicated, data-mining techniques were also used for understanding the causality and dynamics of algal blooms.

Project Outcome: Two popular data-driven techniques, namely artificial neural networks and genetic programming were used for real-time prediction of algal blooms using chlorophyll (as the algal bio-mass indicator) and related water quality data from a monitoring station in Hong Kong. The results from both the techniques were identical, although GP had the advantage that it provided a relationship between chlorophyll (the output or predicted variable) and the input variables in the form of an equa-tion or formulae. This study showed that data-driven techniques can be a viable alternative for algal bloom modelling and prediction, and the interpretation of results is greatly facilitated by the analytical form of the GP created equations.

Visual data mining and several journal papers have been published based on this study.

Project Title: Hydrologic Runoff Simulation for Marina Catchment in Singapore

Project Period: Completed in 2007

Project Description: This project dealt with the hydrologic runoff simulation for the Marina Bay catch-ment in Singapore, for which the Delft Hydraulics’ rainfall-runoff modelling software named SOBEK was used. A rainfall-runoff concept was developed for the Marina Bay catchment, which is a highly urban catchment. The project involved setting up the SOBEK model, which used various hydrologic data, GIS-based spatial data and tidal data at the Marina Bay. The whole catchment, which was about 100 km2 in area was sub-divided into 227 sub-catchments and the developed rainfall-runoff concept was applied for each sub-catchment.

Project Outcome: The SOBEK model has been setup for the Marina Bay catchment, which can pro-vide the amount of runoff, the peak discharge values, etc. into the Marina Bay. It can also generate flood inundation maps for heavy storms occurring on the catchment. For various event based storms, the model was calibrated using an enhanced Genetic Algorithm, which incorporated parallel computing to speed up the calibration process. The calibrated model was tested on few “validation storms” and the results were quite good.

Research Projects Project Leader Dr. Nitin Muttil Email: nitin.muttil@vu.edu.au Phone: 9919 4751

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January 2007

CONTRIBUTIONS OF NOTE

John Cary on EPA review

The EPA recently released an environmental audit of the historical contamination in the lower Maribyr-nong River in the area of industrial precinct of Whitehall St, Yarraville, which found levels of contami-nations for a range of metals, including arsenic, in sediment samples consistent with those expected in a highly urbanised catchment. A concurrent fish study looked at a large range of contaminants in fish and eels, including heavy metals, dioxins and other compounds. While it is found that none of the contaminants were above the relevant safety standards, people were advised to limit their consump-tion of fish taken from the River. The audit resulted from a campaign by The Age in 2005 and the au-dit findings were reported in The Age of 24 January. Professor John Cary chaired the Audit Reference Group.

18th May, 2007

The advanced Membrane Technologies for Water Treatment Research Cluster was launched at Victo-ria University's City Flinders Campus. The Membrane Technologies for Water Research Cluster brings together some of Australia's leading scientists and institutions, with the goal of placing Australia at the forefront of innovative membrane development. There were presentations by Dr Tom Hatton, CSIRO, Professor Linda Rosenman, Victoria University, Dr. Michael Barber, CSIRO, Mr Alan Gregory, CSIRO and Professor Stephen Gray, Victoria University.

2 - 6th July, 2007

Associate Professor Chris Perera held two REALM Workshops, one Basic and the other Advanced, for the Australian Water Industry during 2-6 July 2007. Twenty two participants attended the workshops. REALM workshops have become an annual event at Victoria University, since 1997. REALM (REsource ALlocation Model) is a public domain computer software tool, which is used by all water authorities in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, and by some authorities in other states of Australia, for water resource planning and management. Victoria University supports REALM and provides training programs.

9th August, 2007

Talk by Dr. Tim Carroll from Fonterra R&D, New Zealand who gave a seminar on his research in the water and food industries. Tim is a Chemical Engineer with a PhD from Cornell, USA, who has experi-ence in developing a fundamental understanding of new process technologies as well as implementing these systems into processing plants.

4th September, 2007

MIEX Membrane Seminar conducted by Orica Australia Pty Ltd. Presentations by Beryn J. Adams and Thomas Dahlke at Werribee Campus.

24th September, 2007

Dr. Pierre Le Clech from the University of New South Wales, Sydney gave a seminar on his research in membrane technology for water and wastewater treatment. Pierre has a PhD in Treatment of do-mestic wastewater with MBRs.

25th September 2007

Dr. Mikel Duke is from the University of Queensland and is currently an Australian Research Council International Fellow at Arizona State University, USA. He gave a seminar on his research on the pro-duction of inorganic molecular sieve membranes for desalination and gas separation.

Events

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12th November 2007

Dr Jochen Meier-Haack from Institut für Polymerforschung (Polymer Research Institute) Dresden, Germany gave a seminar on his research into membrane synthesis and modification.

30th November 2007

A Beijing Delegation visited VU to discuss and consider matters related to their interests and potential collaboration (mainly among researchers and universities in Victoria State and Beijing City) in energy, renewable (including solar wind, geothermal and bio-mills) energy, water, sustainable building, emis-sion reduction, city planning and public facilities (energy efficient areas). In addition, the Delegation also discussed with Deakin University and Victoria University and other suitable organizations the pos-sibility of establishing an Australia-China (or Victoria-Beijing) Technology Centre on clean energy and environment technologies.

10th December 2007

The ISI held its first annual staff day. This is a once a year informal event that allows the ISI staff, stu-dents, Research Associates and Adjuncts to come together with the view to meet new members, ex-change notes on who is doing what and provide and seek opportunities for working together. The pur-pose of the event is for future planning, team building, networking, taking stock of what we have ac-complished over the year, and providing opportunity to exchange ideas for planning and working to-gether in future.

.

Events

34

Stephen Gray, IWAA Committee Meeting, 23 January, Syd-ney.

Linda Zou, Australian Colloid and Interface Symposium, 4-8 February, Sydney, “Using titania/silica and tinania/activated carbon photocatalysts to degrade organic pollutants and their regeneration”.

Suku Bhaskaran, S Fernandez, Eighth International Re-search Conference on Quality, Innovation and Knowledge Management, 12-14 February, New Delhi, India, “Website laddering and the adoption of e-business by Australian small-to-medium scale food enterprises”.

Suku Bhaskaran, S Fernandez, Eighth International Re-search Conference on Quality, Innovation and Knowledge Management, 12-14 February, New Delhi, India, “Barriers to the adoption of e-business by Australian SMEs”.

V. Goel, Suku Bhaskaran, Eighth International Research Conference on Quality, Innovation and Knowledge Manage-ment, 12-14 February, New Delhi, India, “Supply chain management: Is a developed economy model applicable in an emerging economy context?”.

John Cary, Suku Bhaskaran, Michael Polonsky, 51st Annual Conference of Australian Agriculturual & Resource Eco-nomic Society, 12-17 February, NZ, Queenstown, “The limitation of market driven sustainability. The case of envi-ronmental management systems for food production in Aus-tralia”.

J.D. Orbell, “Polyphenolics in Food – How Good are they as Antioxidants?”, the 10th Government Food Analysts Confer-ence”, 14 – 16 February 2007, Melbourne, Australia, invited presentation. S.K. Kondaboina, J.D. Orbell and V.J. Mishra, “Effect of thermal treatment and storage on the antioxidant activity of vaccinium fruit juice and the antioxidant activity of total vac-cinium berry extract versus its polyphenolic constituents”, 14 – 16 February 2007, Melbourne, Australia, invited pres-entation. Kevin Zhang, Launch of CEDA report on Water Manage-ment in the Commercial Sector., 19 February, Sydney.

Stephen Gray, Linda Zou, Malcolm Chaikin, AWA Mem-brane Conference, 21-22 February, Melbourne, Stephen gave a presentation on NOM fouling of membranes.

Stephen Gray, RQF Discipline Workshop, 23 February, Canberra.

Rebecca Leshinsky, Inaugural International Planning Law and Property Rights Forum., Amsterdam, “Social and Cul-tural Impacts in Victorian land use and developments”.

Stephen Gray, Ozwater 2007 Convention & Exhibition, 4-8 March, Sydney, “The effect of membrane type and solution chemistry on microfiltration performance” - paper no o7042.

Stephen Gray, Peter Sanciolo, Adva Zach-Maor, Malcolm Chaikin, Paul Hedayati,, Desalination Workshop , 15 March, Melbourne, “Alternative and emerging technologies - the need for research and development”, paper presented by Stephen Gray.

John Cary, 2007 Australian Academy of Science FENNER Conference on the Environment (Water,Pollution and Austra-lia's urban future) Shine Dome, Canberra, 15-16 March, Can-berra.

Stephen Gray, American Chemical Society, 233rd National Meeting & Exposition, Meeting, 24-28 March , USA.

John Orbell, Spillcon 2007 Conference, 26-30 March , Perth.

Paul Boon, Royal Botanic Gardens, 16 April, Melbourne, "The trials and tribulations of environmental water allocations to wetlands."

Darrell Reeve, 7th Asia Pacific Round Table for Sustainable Consumption & Production. , 25-27 April , Hanoi, Vietnam. Presented work from the Masters of Environmental Manage-ment course.

Kevin Zhang and Chandra Bhuta, ASCE Construction Re-search Congress Conference., 6-8 May , South Africa, "Project Management Control of Expert Judgement in Project Cost Estimating in Australia."

Linda Zou, APCSEET 2007, 6th Asia Pacific Conference on Sustainable Energy and Environment Technology, 7-11 May, Bangkok, , "Using Nano-Titanate Photocatalytic Decolour-ation of Concentrated Dye Effluent" & "Study of Photocatalytic Decolouration of concentrated dye effluent and the effects of added auxiliaries".

Shah, N.P. 2007. Health benefits of galacto-oligosaccharides . A paper presented at the IDF Conference, Moscow, Russia, May, 17-19, 2007.

Linda Zou, Seminar on Water - use and re-use, 29 May , Mel-bourne.

Paul Boon/Robinson RR, Maintaining biodiversity in modified landcapes of Southern Australia, 15 June, University of Bal-larate, Ballarat, “Biodiversity in degraded Ramsar-listed wet-lands: the trials and tribulations of environmental water appli-cations to brackish-water wetlands along the Gippsland Lakes”.

Ong, L., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Probiotic cheddar cheeses delivering bioactive properties. Australian Institute of Food Sciences and Technology, Melbourne, June 24-28, 2007.

Conference Participation

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Ong, L., Henriksson, A., Shah, N.P. 2007. Influence of probi-otic microorganisms and ripening conditions on proteolysis, sensory evaluation, and the release of antihypertensive peptides in Cheddar cheese. Australian Institute of Food Sciences and Technology, Melbourne, June 24-28, 2007.

Ding, W.K., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Micro-encapsulation as a novel delivery method of probiotics into fruit juices. Austra-lian Institute of Food Sciences and Technology, Melbourne, June 24-28, 2007.

Pham, T.T., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Enhancing the biotrans-formation of isoflavone glucodides to bioactive forms in soymilk by probiotic organisms. Australian Institute of Food Sciences and Technology, Melbourne, June 24-28, 2007.

Shah, N.P. 2007. Profiling, Biotransformation, Stability and Health Potential of Isoflavones in Soymilk, A paper pre-sented at the AIFST annual conference, Melbourne, June 24-28, 2007.

John Orbell, 9th International Effects of Oil on Wildlife Con-ference, 25-29 June, California, USA, “The potential for the application of magnetic particle technology to wildlife reha-bilitation in the field and A quantitative essay for relative pre-conditioner effectiveness in wildlife rehabilitation”.

Graham Thorpe, 5th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics , 1-4 July, South Africa, 1) “Contemporary correlations of heat and mass transfer in irrigated packed beds applied to the design of cooling systems for horticultural produce”.

2) “Simultaneous heat and mass transfer in hygroscopic porous media - Two contrasting analyses”.

Ong, L., Henriksson, A., Shah, N.P. 2007. Addition of probi-otic microorganisms to improve proteolysis, sensory evalua-tion and the release of antihypertensive peptides in Ched-dar cheeses ripened at 4 and 8 ºC. ADSA Annual meetings, San Antonio, TX, USA, July 8-12, 2007.

Paul Boon, 45th Annual Conference of the Australian Ma-rine Sciences Association, 9-13 July, Melbourne, “Lessons learnt over a 4 year R&D project in rehabilitating brackish-water wetlands of the Gippsland Lakes, south-eastern Aus-tralia. Invited presentation to Special Symposium on Estua-rine Biogeochemistry”.

C. Bhuta, G. Zhang, R. Horat. Fourth International Confer-ence on Construction in the 21st Century (CITC-IV), 11-13 July, Gold Coast, Australia, “The Implementation of Earned Value Management in Construction Cost Management and Audit”, “Accelerating Innovation in Engineering, Manage-ment and Technology”.

Adva Zach Maor, Linda Zou, REUSE07 Conference, 16-18 July, Sydney. Accepted for oral presentation: "Diagnostic analysis of the technical feasibility of RO desalting of Wer-ribee Water". Paper presented by Adva Zach Maor

Kevin Zhang, Conrad D’cruz, CRIOCM International Sympo-sium in “Advanced Construction Management and Real Es-tate” 8-13 August, Sydney, “Constructability Study on Using Acess Floor Systems for Office Building Fitout in Australia” , “Risk allocation for public private partnerships in Australia: Literature review and a proposed research”, Understanding major construction safety risks: China versus Australia”, “Need for alternate methods for OHS Implementation in Construction Projects”.

John Cary, 22nd Congress of the European Society for Rural Sociology 'Mobilities Vulnerabilities and Sustainabilities: New questions and challenges for Europe", 17-26 August, Nether-lands, “Social and economic vulnerabiilty and opportunity in natural resource management” to Working Group 19 Innova-tion in Resource Management. The presented paper was based on work undertaken in Australia and in China.

Paul Boon presented an invited paper at the 10th International River Symposium and Environmental Flows Conference (Brisbane 3-6 September), entitled “Lessons from a 4-year R&D project rehabilitating Gippsland Lakes wetlands”.

Paul Boon was also a panel member (one of four) at the con-ference’s E-Flows Feature Workshop, a morning session de-voted to examining methods for securing water for environ-mental purposes through scientific knowledge, policy and implementation.

Chandra Bhuta, International Conference on Engineering Education in Coimbra, 3-7th September, Portugal, “A Case for Alternative approaches for Better Education in Oh&S in Con-struction”.

Linda Zou, Australia Nanotechnology Alliance's Technology Update Series event, 6-Sep, Melbourne.

Stephen Gray, Inauguration Workshop, Center of Research Excellence in Nanotechnology, King Fahd University of Petro-leum & Minerals, 7-10 September, Saudi Arabia.

John Cary, Water End Use Symposium at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia from 26-27 September., 26-27 Septem-ber, Gold Coast.

Chris Perera, Water End Use Symposium at Griffith Univer-sity, Gold Coast, Australia from 26-27 September., 26-27 Sep-tember, Gold Coast.

Liong, M., Dunshea, F., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Probiotic and prebiotic based diet reduces cholesterol and improves RBC deformity caused by high fat diet. A paper to be presented at World Dairy Summit, Dublin, Ireland, Sept. 28-Oct. 4, 2007.

Conference Participation

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Graham Thorpe attended the Australia and New Zealand So-lar Energy Society conference at Alice Springs between 2nd and 6th October and presented a paper entitled Transpired solar collectors for heating air in desiccant bed cooling sys-tems. The work of one of his PhD students, John Lasich, figured very prominently and on the Saturday of the confer-ence two bus loads of delegates visited his photovoltaic power station located at Hemannsburg, some 125 km south west of Alice Springs.

Toomey M & Boon PI (2007). Response of Brazilian Milfoil (Myriophyllum aquaticum) to salinity and water-level fluctua-tions and its potential to invade wetlands of the Gippsland Lakes, south-east Victoria. Proceedings of the 3rd Victoria Weed Conference, Bendigo, 3-4 October.

Paul Boon, Womindjeka Day at the Yea Wetlands Centre, 20-21 October, Yea Wetlands Centre. Invited to attend and speak.

Bo Zhu attended a workshop on “Advanced Oxidation Proc-esses” at RMIT University on 22nd October 2007.

Linda Zou, International Desalination Association World Con-gress., 21-26 October, Spain, “Low Cost Activated Carbon Electrosorptive Deionisation Technology in Brackish Water Desalination by Linda Zou and Daoduo Qi”

Stephen Gray, IMSTEC (International Membrane Science and Technology Conference), Sydney from November 5-9th, 2007. Presented at the CSIRO Cluster on Advanced Membrane workshop and at the IWA workshop on membrane and fouling characterisation.

Stephen Gray, Victorian Chapter Event, Australian Nano Busi-ness Forum (ANBF), November 15th 2007, Level 1/257 Collins St, Melbourne.

Boon PI & Carr G (2007). Coastal wetlands of western Victo-ria – saltmarshes. National Heritage Trust 2 Outcomes - Coastal, estuarine and marine seminar to Boards of Western Coastal Board, Corangamite CMA & Glenelg-Hopkins CMA. Warrnambool, 21 November. Rebecca Leshinsky presented a conference referred paper at the State of Australian Cities 07 Conference, 28-30 November held in Adelaide entitled 'Knowing the social in urban planning law decision making'

Jay Yang and Guomin (Kevin) Zhang, "Smart Measures for Sustainable Outcomes: Integrated Considerations for Sustain-able Refurbishment of Office Buildings", Proceedings of SB07 -2007 Regional Conference on Sustainable Building and Con-struction, Hong Kong, 4-5 December 2007.

Nitin Muttil, International Congress on Modelling and Simula-tion (MODSIM 2007), University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 10-13 December, NZ, “Revealing Patterns in Coastal Water Quality Data using Statistical Analysis by Muttil N. and Chau, K.W. (2207” and “A Parallel Shuffled Complex Evolution Model Calibrating Algorithm to Reduce Computational Time by Muttil, N. Liong, S.Y. and Nesterov, O. (2007)”.

Conference Participation

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Stephen Gray, N.S.C. Becker, N.A.Booker and A.Davey. High floc strength with aged polyelectrolytes, Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects, Vol 298, Issue 3, 1 May 2007, Pg 262-266 Stephen Gray, Colin Ritchie, Thuy Tran, Brian Bolto, Paul Greenwood, Frank Busetti. Effect of membrane type and solution chemistry on MF performance, Ozwater 07, paper no. o7042 Stephen Gray, Thuy Tran, Brian Bolto, Tony D. Farmer and Tony F. Collings Ultrasound enhancement of microfiltration performance for NOM removal Organic Geochemistry, 38 (2007), 1091-1096, doi:10.1016/j.orggeochem.2007.02.019 A. Zach-Maor, R. Semiat, A. Rahardianto, Y. Cohen, S. Wilson , S.R. Gray, Diagnostic analysis of the technical feasibility of RO desalting of treated wastewater,. Proceed-ings of the 3rd Australian Water Association ' Water Reuse and Recycling' Conference (REUSE07), Sydney NSW 16-18 July 2007 S. Gray, D. Reeve, New institute for sustainability and inno-vation, 7th Asia Pacific Round table for Sustainable Con-sumption and Production, April 2007, Hanoi, Vietnam S.R. Gray, C.B. Ritchie, T. Tran, B.A. Bolto, Effect of NOM characteristics and membrane type on microfiltration per-formance, Wat. Res. 41 (2007) 3833-3841 T. Tran, B. Bolto, S. Gray, M. Hoang, E. Ostarcevic, An au-topsy study of a fouled reverse osmosis membrane element in a brackish water treatment plant. Wat. Res. 41 (2007) 3915-3923 Ashok Sharma, Stephen Gray, Clare Diaper, Peter Liston and Carol Howe, “Application of technologies for integrated water management in urban developments – Canberra case study.” Urban Water Linda Zou and Bo Zhu “The synergistic effect of ozonation and photocatalysis on color removal from reused water” Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A; Chemistry (Available online 19 November 2007) Qi Dauduo, Zou Linda, and Hu Eric, 2007. Electrosorption: An Alternative Option for Desalination, Research Journal of Chemistry and Environment, Vol 11 (3) Sep. (2007) Linda Y. Zou, Yonggang Luo, and Eric J. Hu, 2007. Using Titania Photocatalysts to Degrade Toluene in a Combined Adsorption and Photocatalysis Process, J. Adv. Oxid. Tech-nol, Vol 10, No 1, 2007

Linda Zou and Bo Zhu. Enhancing the Reuse of Treated Ef-fluent by Photocatalytic Process, Journal of Adv. Oxid. Tech-nol, Vol. 10, No 2, 2007 Margaret Leigh Ackland, Linda Zou, David Freestone, Simone van de Waasenburg and Agnes A Michalczyk. Diesel exhaust particulate matter induces multinucleate cells and zinc trans-porter-dependent apoptosis in human airway cells, Immunol-ogy and Cell Biology, pp1-6 (2007) Seng Sing Tan, Linda Zou, Eric Hu. Photosynthesis of hydro-gen and methane as key components for clean energy sys-tem, Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, Vol 8, pg 89-22 (2007) Boon PI, Raulings, E, Morris, Roache M, Robinson R, Hatton M & Salter J (2007). Ecology and management of the Lake Wellington wetlands, Gippsland Lakes: a report on the R&D project, 2003-2006. Land & Water Australia, Canberra Salter J, Morris K & Boon PI (2007). Does salinity reduce the tolerance of aquatic plants to fluctuating water regimes? Rip-Rap (Newsletter of the River and Riparian Lands Management Program, Land & Water Australia) 32: 10-11 Paul Boon, Wetland rehabilitation in Gippsland Lakes, , Aus-tralian Landcare, June 07, pg 14 Morris K. Boon PI, Raulings EJ, White SE & Bailey PC. Does Phragmites australis (Common Reed) facilitate the growth of Melaleuca ericifolia (Swamp Paperbark) in brackish-water wetlands?: an experimental mesocosm study. Marine & Freshwater Research, Toomey M & Boon PI (in press). Response of Brazilian Milfoil (Myriophyllum aquaticum) to salinity and water-level fluctua-tions and its potential to invade wetlands of the Gippsland Lakes, south-east Victoria. Plant Protection Quarterly 21: 19-23 Raulings E, Boon PI, Bailey PC, Morris K, Roache MC & Rob-inson RR (2007). Rehabilitation of Swamp Paperbark ( Me-laleuca ericifolia) wetlands in south-eastern Australia: effects of hydrology, microtopography, plant age and planting tech-nique on the success of community-based revegetation trials. Wetland Ecology and Management 15: 175-188. Boon PI, Fluker M & Wilson, N (2007). How effective are educative and interpretive programs in ensuring ecological sustainability of recreational activities in protected areas? A case study of cinnamon fungus (Phytophthora cinnamomi) dieback in the Brisbane Ranges National Park, south-eastern Australia. Proceedings of the 15th Council for Australian Uni-versity Tourism and Hopsitality Education (CAUTHE).

Publications 2007

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Salter J, Morris K, Bailey PCB & Boon PI (2007). Interactive effects of salinity and water depth on the growth of seedling Swamp Paperbark (Melaleuca ericifolia Sm). Aquatic Botany 86: 213-222. D. Orbell, D.C. Thompson, H.V. Dao, L.N. Hgeh, S.W. Bigger, M, Healy, R, Jessop and P. Dann, “The Removal of Oil from Mammalian Fur Employing Magnetic Particle Technology”, 2007, Marine Mammal Science, submitted. John D. Orbell, Hien V. Dao, Lawrence N. Ngeh, Stephen W. Bigger. Magnetic particle technology in environmental remediation and wildlife rehabilitation. Environmentalist, Vol 27, pg 175 – 182 (2007), J.D. Orbell, H.V. Dao, L.N. Ngeh and J.D. Orbell, “Magnetic Particle Technology in Environmental Remediation and Wildlife Rehabilita-tion, Environmentalist, 2007, 27, 175 –182. P, Zou, G..Zhang, J.Wang. Understanding the key risks in construc-tion projects in China, International Journal of Project Management, Vol 25, Pg 601-614 (2007) Zhang, G. and Zou, P.X.W. (2007) "Fuzzy AHP Risk Assessment for Joint Venture Construction Projects in China", Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 133 (10), pp771-779. Patrick X W Zou, Guomin Zhang and Jiayuan Wang. Understanding the Key Risks in Construction Projects in China, International Journal of Project Management, Vol 8. Shah, N.P. 2007. Functional cultures and health benefits. Intern. Dairy J. (published on line). Donkor, O.N., Henriksson, A., Vasiljevic, K. Singh, T., and Shah, N.P. 2007. ACE-inhibitory activity of probiotic yoghurt. International Dairy Journal (published on line).

Otieno, D.O., Shah, N.P. 2007. Profiling of isoflavones in soymilk from soy protein isolate using extracted ion chromatography and positive ion fragmentation techniques. Journal of Food Chemistry (published on line) Purwandari, U., Shah, N.P., and Vasiljevic, T. 2007. Effect of exopoly-saccharide producing strains of streptococcus thermophilus on the texture of yoghurt. International Dairy J. (published on line).

Ong, L., Henriksson, A., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Angiotensin converting enzyme-inhibitory activity in Cheddar cheeses made with the addition of probiotic Lactobacillus casei sp. Lait 87:149-165. Aryana, K.J., Plauche, S., Rao, R.M., McGrew, P., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Fat free plain yogurt manufactured with inulins of various chain lengths and lactobacillus acidophilus. J. Food Sci. 72(3):M79-M84. Donkor, O. N., A. Henriksson, T. Vasiljevic and N.P. Shah. 20007. α-Galactosidase and proteolytic activities of selected probiotic and dairy cultures in fermented soymilk. Food Chemistry 104:10-20. Donkor, O.N., Tsangalis, D., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Viability of probi-otic bacteria and concentrations of organic acids in commercial Vaalia yoghurts during refrigerated storage. Food Australia 59(4):121-126. Zisu, B., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Textural characteristics and pizza bake properties of low-fat Mozzarella cheese as influenced by pre-acidification with citric acid and use of encapsulated and ropy exo-polysaccharide producing starter cultures. Intern. Dairy J. 17:985-997.

Donkor, O.N., A. Henriksson, T. Vasiljevic and N.P. Shah. 2007. Prote-olytic activity of dairy lactic acid bacteria and probiotics as determinant of viability and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitory activity in fermented milk. Le Lait 87: 21-38. Donkor, O. N., Nilmini, S. L. I., Stolic, P., Vasiljevic, T. & Shah, N. P. (2007). Survival and activity of selected probiotic organisms in set-type yoghurt during cold storage. International Dairy Journal. 17(6):657-665. Wilson, N., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Microencapsulation of vitamins. ASEAN Food J. 14(1):1-14. Otieno, D.O. Shah, N.P. 2007. A comparison of changes in transfor-mation of isoflavones in soymilk using varying concentrations of ex-ogenous and probiotic-derived endogenous β-glucosidases, Journal of Applied Microbiology, Vol 101, pg 1-12. Otieno, D.O. Ashton, J.F. Shah, N.P. 2007. Role of microbial strain and storage temperatures in the degradation of isoflavone phytoestro-gens in fermented soymilk with selected β-glucosidase producing L. casei strains, Food research International, Vol 40, pg 371-380. Ong, L., Henriksson, A., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Chemical analysis and sensory evaluation of Cheddar cheese produced with probiotic Lacto-bacillus acidophilus, Lb. paracasei, Lb. casei and Bifidobacterium sp, Int. Dairy J. (published on line). Ong, L., Henriksson, A., and Shah, N.P. 2007. Proteolytic pattern and organic acid profiles of probiotic Cheddar cheese as influenced by probiotic strains of Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lb. paracasei, Lb. casei and Bifidobacterium sp, , Int. Dairy J. pg 67-78. Bhaskaran, S, Sukumaran B. Contextual and methodological issues in COO studies, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol 25, Issue 1, pg 66-81, 2007 Bhaskaran, S. Sukumaran B. National culture, business culture and management practices: Consequential relationships? Cross Cultural Management - An International Journal, Vol 14, Issue 1, pg 54-67, 2007. Bhaskaran, S. Trends in food marketing landscape: Healthy foods and foods with therapeutic attributes, Asia Pacific Food Industry, Vol 19, No 1, pg 58-60, 2007. Xiao Q Su, Joanne R Babb. The effect of cooking process on the total lipid and n-3 LC-PUFA contents of Australian Bass Strait scallops, Pecten fumatus, , Asia Pac J Clin Nutr; Vol 16 (Suppl 1): Pg 407-411 (2007).

R. Mitra, J.D. Orbell and M.S. Muralitharan, “Medicinal Plants of Ma-laysia”, 2007, Asia Pacific Biotechnology News (APBN), Vol 11, No.2, 24 – 29. R. Mitra, S. Agricola, B. Mitchell, J.D. Orbell, C. Gray and M.S. Mu-ralitharan, 2007, “Medicinal Plants of Thailand”, Asia Pacific Biotech-nology News (APBN), Vol. 11, No. 8, 346-356. R. Mitra, B. Mitchell, C. Gray, J. Orbell, T. Coulepis and M. S. Mu-ralitharan, 2007, “Medicinal Plants of Brazil”, Asia Pacific Biotechnol-ogy News (APBN), Vol. 11, No. 11, 689 – 706.

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R. Mitra, B. Mitchell, C. Gray, J. Orbell, T. Coulepis and M. S. Mu-ralitharan, 2007, “Medicinal Plants of Indonesia”, Asia Pacific Biotech-nology News (APBN), Vol. 11, No. 11, 726 - 743. Stanley, G.A, and M. De Barres Lopes. 2007. Alcohol, Stress and Working with Yeast. Microbiology Australia 28:87-89. Thorpe, G. R. (2007) – Heat and moisture transfer in hygroscopic media: Two contrasting analyses. 5th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Sun City, South Africa, Paper TG1, 1st-4th July 2007. Thorpe, G. R. (2007) – Contemporary correlations for heat and mo-mentum transfer in irrigated packed beds applied to the design of cooling equipment for horticultural produce. 5th International Confer-ence on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Sun City, South Africa, Paper TG2, 1st-4th July 2. Alexandra H. Blitz-Raith, Rohani Paimin, Robert W. Cattrall and Spas D. Kolev, Talanta, 2007, Separation of Cobalt(II) from Nickel(II) by Solid-phase Extraction into Aliquat 336 Chloride Immobilized in Poly(vinyl chloride) 71, 419 – 423. Chau, K. W. and Muttil, N. (2007). Data Mining and Multivariate Sta-tistical Analysis for Ecological System in Coastal Waters, Journal of Hydroinformatics, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 305 - 317. Tran, D. H., Perera, B. J. C. and Ng, A. W. M., 2007, “Neural Network Based Prediction Model for Structural Deterioration Urban Drainage Pipes”, International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM 07), Christchurch, New Zealand. (in press)

King, D.M. and Perera, B.J.C., Sensitivity Analysis for Evaluating Importance of Variables Used in an Urban Water Supply Planning Model. MODSIM07, Christchurch, New Zealand, 10-13 December 2007, (CD).