Ethanol distillation performance test of porang flour processing residue in SME scale distillator

Abstract

One of the porang processing steps involves the production of porang flour with glucomannan concentrations that meet market requirements. To increase glucomannan levels, impurities are separated. The common solvent used is ethanol. In the extraction procedure, ethanol is not only used once but reused in another extraction procedure by redistilled to increase the concentration of ethanol. This study’s objective is to determine and analyze the effect of input volume variations (5,7.5 and 10 liters) at heating temperatures (85°C, 90°C, and 95°C) on ethanol product volume and concentration. In the distillation process 5; 7.5 and 10 L, ethanol levels respectively in the range of 58.41-71.87%, 61.81-65.87, and 63.76-65.93%. Based on the analysis, the constant value (k) in the change of ethanol distillation level during the distillation process predicted at 5L volume were 0.0149, 0.0160, and 0.0182, for 7.5L volume were 0.0098, 0.0134, and 0.0153, 0.0071, 0.0083, and 0.0102 minutes−1 at 10 L sample volume for each distillation temperature. The optimal values for a distillation device evaluated on a Small Medium Enterprises (SME) scale by varying the volume and temperature of the substance in the distillation vessel were determined to be 5 liters of volume and 95°C, respectively.