The study describes interrelationship among development of Indonesian palm oil industrial cluster, transaction cost, networks effect, and supply chain integration with competitiveness of business and economic environment. From the recent Indonesian perspective, development of industrial cluster performance needed strong foundation of business and economic environment competitiveness that technically manifested by supporting infrastructure upgrading, hence facilitating supply chain integration occurence through network externality. The succeed of future industrial cluster were influenced by cluster performance through networks effect and decreasing of transaction cost along with business and economic environment competitiveness improvement. Policy implication needed was the policy that will be to develop and to strengthen coordination within sectors and clusters rather than economic special pattern. Business implication from this study reveals the importance of supporting infrastructure as a prerequisite for successful of industrial cluster development, and critical to implement governance structure (agent) for palm oil industrial cluster advancement.

​Biofuels will play a key role in the 21st century as the world faces two critical problems; volatile fuel prices and global climatic changes. Both of these are linked to the overdependence on the fossil fuels: petroleum, natural gas, and coal. Transportation is almost totally dependent on petroleum based fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, liquefied petroleum gas, and on natural gas. Despite a significant amount of research into biofuels, the field has not been able to replace fossil fuels. Recent advances will change this scenario. Extracting fuel from biomass has been very expensive (both monetarily and in land usage), time consuming, unusable byproducts, etc. Technology to obtain liquid fuel from non-fossil sources must be improved to be faster, more efficient and more cost-effective. This book will cover the current technology used for a variety of plant types and explore shortcomings with each.

Palm oil is a big business. Palm oil has been widely used in food and non-food industries. More than half the products on sale in supermarkets are made with palm oil—yet many people hardly know anything about this industry. They don’t even know chemical engineers have a significant role to play in this industry. This book provides a series of episodes for you to discover the opportunities chemical engineers have in the palm oil milling industry. This book is an illuminating memoir that brings readers closer to the most enigmatic profession of all time. It is a promise that Hong Wai Onn has fulfilled again and again. More people have gained a better understanding of the role of chemical engineers in the palm oil milling industry by listening to his sharing. You do not have to be a chemical engineer or work in this industry to enjoy his memoir. The insights are just as valuable for any discipline of engineering, and for any business, for the sake of inspiration.

​Biofuels will play a key role in the 21st century as the world faces two critical problems; volatile fuel prices and global climatic changes. Both of these are linked to the overdependence on the fossil fuels: petroleum, natural gas, and coal. Transportation is almost totally dependent on petroleum based fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, liquefied petroleum gas, and on natural gas. Despite a significant amount of research into biofuels, the field has not been able to replace fossil fuels. Recent advances will change this scenario. Extracting fuel from biomass has been very expensive (both monetarily and in land usage), time consuming, unusable byproducts, etc. Technology to obtain liquid fuel from non-fossil sources must be improved to be faster, more efficient and more cost-effective. This book will cover the current technology used for a variety of plant types and explore shortcomings with each.