Sugar factory is an industry that produces hot liquid waste. This hot liquid waste is a waste from condenser activity used in the evaporation and cooking process.
Part of the condenser wastewater is discharged directly into the environment without undergoing treatment due to the limited capacity of the temperature reducing unit.
The condenser wastewater content also includes B3 waste which is very harmful to the environment.
If the waste is not destroyed as quickly as the production process, it can kill organisms in the water and can affect community sanitation problems.
Referring on this fact, four students of the Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Brawijaya (FT-UB) created a tool that can convert hot liquid waste from sugar factories into electricity and clean water.
The clean energy offered by FT-UB students is obtained from the utilization of liquid waste heat using the thermoelectric performance and also the principle of reverse osmosis for further processing of residual waste.
Thermoelectric is a power generation technology that works by converting temperature differences into electrical energy.
This thermoelectric can be applied as an alternative energy by utilizing the temperature difference from the waste heat from the factory.
The reverse osmosis system is used to separate high concentration chemicals from low concentrated water. It can be applied to get clean water that can be reused for factory cooling and others.
The team works on its design that includes designing the components of the electricity generating system, the components of the reverse osmosis system, and the components of the energy bank system.
“Hopefully this innovation can provide benefits to the sugar industry in particular and various industrial sectors in general,” hoped one of the team members, Abdul Mudjib Sulaiman Wahid from Mechanical Engineering 2018.
Mudjib as Mechanical Design and Simulation made this innovation with his partner, Ihza Aulia Rahman from Electrical Engineering 2018 as Electrical Design and Simulation.
He also collaborated with two other members Hogi Syahputra and Sifaul Masud as the administration and partner affairs.
This hot liquid waste conversion machine technology is a development of ROTATION (Reverse Osmosis And Thermoelectric Hot Waste Converter With Clean Energy Bank System For Industry) which is more focused on sugar factories.
ROTATION itself has won 2nd place at the Design Competition for Engineering Student in Solo, November 2019.
“We developed it from ROTATION, but this time we highlight a waste filtration system and a monitoring system that is already based on a microcontroller,” explained Mudjib.
Guided by Eka Maulana ST., MT., M.Eng., This team will strive along side the 18 other works from FTUB representing uniersitas Brawijaya to the XXXIII National Student Scientific Week (PIMNAS) in November 2020. (AMS/mic)
