Engineering students gain experience in PNG as part of their degree
Two UQ Mechanical Engineering students have swapped the lecture theatre for a palm oil mill in Papua New Guinea this semester.
Fourth-year students David Shaw and Adam Brown are working at New Britain Palm Oil Limited (NBPOL) on the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea as part of the Professional Engineering Placement Scholarship (PEPS) program. Offered through the School of Engineering, the PEPS program allows students to put their engineering skills into practice for a whole semester and at same time gain credit towards their degree.
David said that the PEPS program was a great opportunity and had enabled him to see a different part of the world and gain valuable experience while he studied. “Things are so different to Australia, so we had to adapt to a totally different way of working,” David said.
David and Adam are both working on separate research projects during their time with New Britain Palm Oil Limited, which will benefit the company’s working operation. David’s project involves optimising the operation of a screw press that extracts oil from the palm fruit. Adam is working on a project that hopes to harness energy being wasted through steam emissions, which if successful has the potential to save the NBPOL money and improve efficiency.
NBPOL Manager Mr Peter Morgan said that it was great to have the students asking questions and challenging the way the company did things. Mr Morgan is himself a UQ engineering graduate, and has lived on New Britain with his family for the past 11 years. “This is our first collaboration with UQ, and we hope that it will be the start of many,” Mr Morgan said.
NBPOL is Papua New Guinea's largest oil palm plantation and milling operator. The company’s core activity is the cultivation and processing of palm and kernel oils for sales to both domestic and foreign markets.