UTAR Faculty of Engineering and Green Technology (FEGT) academics, namely Institute of Postgraduate Studies and Research Deputy Director Assoc Prof Dr Sumathi Sethupathi, the lead researcher and her associate Department of Environmental Engineering Head Assoc Prof Dr Mohammed J. K. Bashir, Master by Research (Graduate) Muhammad Younas and other fellow contributors who are UTAR graduates Leong Loong Kong, Humayun Nadeem and Areeb Shehzad, were awarded “Energy & Fuels Top 25 Most Cited* Articles in 2016” for their research paper titled “Recent Advancements, Fundamental Challenges, and Opportunities in Catalytic Methanation of CO2”, published in 2016.  The recognition was given by Energy & Fuels Journal based on Clarivate Analytics for the August 2020 most cited articles.

Clarivate Analytics would usually name the world’s most impactful research articles in each category based on the total number of citations. The highly cited publications reveal the tremendous rise of interest in certain areas of research.

“Recognition and support of this scientific elite is an important activity for a nation or an institution in planning investments to accelerate advancement. Such achievement brings worldwide recognition to the researchers and their institution which can lead to more research collaboration,” Dr Sumathi explained.

Their research mainly investigated on an integrated system which converts CO2 into value-added products such as methane (CH4) by using solar energy (photosynthesis) or surplus electrical energy in hydrolysis for production of reactant hydrogen to use in CO2 methanation. Master of Engineering Science graduate Younas is the first author of this article. He took a full-time master’s programme at UTAR under the supervision of Dr Sumathi and Co-supervision of Dr Bashir in the year 2014 and graduated in the year 2016. His research was titled “A novel palm shell based activated carbon catalyst for carbon dioxide capture and reforming into methane”. His master’s study was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia through the E-Science Fund. Upon completing his Master’s degree in UTAR, Younas was given full sponsorship to pursue his PhD in Germany by DAAD Germany, in a similar research field due to his outstanding performance on the research work, led by Dr Sumathi.

Their research has provided researchers with a comprehensive overview of CO2 methanation with respect to the recent advancements in the reaction mechanism, catalytic materials, and the novel combination of metal active phase and its synergy. The paper discusses on both thermochemical and electrochemical routes of CO2 methanation, but focuses more on the R thermochemical routes of CO2 methanation. The study found R thermochemical routes to be a promising technique for producing an energy carrier due to the high selectivity of CH4 compared to electrochemical routes.

“Commercial and environmental benefits have made carbon dioxide (CO2) methanation one of the top research projects all over the world, both at the pilot plant and commercial scale. We did the research to save the environment for our future young generation and find alternative renewable energy from waste gases,” Dr Sumathi said and added, “By reducing CO2, we would reduce global warming. Moreover, we could also create a new source of energy, for example, methane (CH4) by re-utilising the CO2.”

Dr Sumathi said, “This will be a great encouragement for me to publish more journal articles in high impact factor journal. Moreover, due to this award, I was also invited to submit special edition journal with my name mentioned as the top 25 authors. This award will be a value-added point for my future promotion. This award has also put me into the experts’ group of academicians working on CO2 utilisation and has indirectly created lots of collaboration opportunities in the future. I’ve been approached by TNB research and Turcomp Engineering Services S/B for this research and several other publications related to CO2 utilisation and conversion to CH4.”