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The increasing demand of energy in Indonesia has led to the urgency to conduct research and development in renewable energy. Biomass is one of the largest renewable energy sources in Indonesia. For biomass to energy conversion, hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) has been considered as one of the potential methods where biomass is processed using subcritical water to produce bio-oil, aqueous phase, gas, and solid product. In this research, the effect of biomass-water ratio on hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) process of microalgae Botryococcus braunii has been investigated. The HTL was conducted using biomass/water ratio 1:10, 1:20 and 1:30 with various holding time for each ratio. The product was bio-crude oil with similar characteristics to crude oil. Experimental results showed that biomass-water ratio affected the distribution of bio-crude oil yields. For biomass-water ratio of 1:10 and 1:20, it was found that bio-crude oil yields reached a maximum at 20 minutes, while the highest bio-crude oil yield of 4% was obtained at biomass-water ratio of 1:10. On the other hand, with biomass-water ratio of 1:30, bio-crude oil yield was continuously increasing with holding time until it reached the maximum yield of 4% at 40 minutes of holding time. The aforementioned results indicated that the highest bio-crude oil yield was obtained using biomass-water ratio 1:10 and 20 minutes of HTL processing time. A B S T R A KPeruraian anaerobik merupakan salah satu bidang riset yang sangat menarik perhatian dalam era krisis energi. Biogas tidak hanya menyediakan energi alternatif, tetapi juga dapat mencegah pencemaran akibat limbah organik. Limbah lemak susu adalah substrat yang potensial untuk proses peruraian anaerobik karena memiliki potensi biogas teoritis yang tinggi akibat kandungan lemaknya yang tinggi. Namun, peruraian anaerobik dari limbah organik dengan kandungan lemak yang tinggi memiliki tantangan tersendiri. Hambatan utama dalam peruraian anaerobik dari limbah lemak susu adalah kecenderungan untuk membentuk lapisan padatan yang tidak larut dan mengapung di bagian atas fase cair. Fenomena ini menghambat akses bakteri hidrolisis terhadap substrat. Saponifikasi adalah salah satu cara untuk meningkatkan kelarutan lapisan padatan tersebut, sehingga meningkatkan ketersediaan substrat untuk bakteri. Saponifikasi akan mengubah kandungan lemak menjadi sabun yang memiliki gugus fungsi polar maupun non-polar. Gugus fungsi yang bersifat polar akan meningkatkan kelarutan substrat dalam air. Studi ini mengevaluasi pengaruh dari berbagai dosis larutan basa yang ditambahkan sebagai reaktan selama perlakuan awal saponifikasi terhadap peruraian anaerobik limbah lemak susu. Kinetika proses peruraian anaerobik dianalisis dengan menggunakan model matematika. Variasi dosis yang diamati pengaruhnya untuk perlakuan awal saponifikasi adalah 0,04 mol basa/g sCOD; 0,02 mol basa/g sCOD; dan nol (tanpa perlakuan awal saponifikasi). Dari penelitian ini, terbukti bahwa saponifikasi berhasil meningkatkan kelarutan limbah lemak susu dan juga ditunjukkan oleh nilai konstanta hidrolisis (kH) 0,00782/hari lebih tinggi dua puluh kali lipat dibandingkan dengan nilai kH 0,00032/hari pada reaktor tanpa saponifikasi. Akan tetapi, penelitian ini juga mengindikasikan bahwa bakteri asidogenik bawaan substrat terhambat kinerjanya oleh paparan pH yang tinggi selama perlakuan awal saponifikasi berlangsung sehingga hasil gas metan yang diperoleh lebih rendah daripada reaktor kontrol.

As fossil fuels were depleting at an alarming rate, the development of renewable energy has become necessary. One of the promising renewable energy to be used is biodiesel. The interest in using third-generation feedstock, which is microalgae, is rapidly growing. The use of third-generation biodiesel feedstock will be more beneficial as it does not compete with food crop use and land utilization. The advantageous characteristic which sets microalgae apart from other biomass sources is that microalgae have high biomass yield. Conventionally, microalgae biodiesel is produced by lipid extraction followed by transesterification. In this study, combination process between hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) and esterification is explored. The HTL process is one of the biomass thermochemical conversion methods to produce liquid fuel. In this study, the HTL process will be coupled with esterification, which takes fatty acid from HTL as raw material for producing biodiesel. Both the processes will be studied by simulating with Aspen Plus and thermodynamic analysis in terms of energy and exergy. Based on the simulation process, it was reported that both processes demand similar energy consumption. However, exergy analysis shows that total exergy loss of conventional exergy loss is greater than the HTL-esterification process.

As Indonesia possessed a considerable amount of gold deposit, many golds mining activities, including the small-scale one, is commonly found. A simple mining technique (amalgamation) that utilizes mercury (Hg) will generate mercury-containing wastewater. One of the prospective Hg removal methods from wastewater is adsorption. In addition, it is also possible that metal contained in the wastewater interacts with other substances, such as humic acid. This experiment was aimed to examine the adsorption process of Hg2+ ions in the wastewater using natural zeolite. The effect of the presence of humic acid, which might be found in sewage, toward the adsorption capacity of Hg2+ onto natural zeolite was investigated. The natural zeolite, which contained several types of minerals, was obtained from Klaten, Central Java. The experiment was conducted using ten mg/L HgCl2 as the initial concentration and ten mg/L humic acids. A comprehensive study that includes isotherm and the kinetic study was carried out. Experimental results showed that the presence of humic acid was found to reduce the capacity of Hg2+ adsorption on natural zeolite. Freundlich isotherm model was found to be more suitable to represent equilibrium adsorption data. Kinetic examination revealed that the pseudo-second-order model was able to produce a better agreement with experimental data.