The Production of Bioethanol from Corncob as Fuel for Generator Set of Gasoline Motor

Abstract

-Along with the development of the era and the technology, which are rapidly growing every time, the global communities receive both positive and negative impacts from these advancements. One of the negative effects is the issue of waste. Physically, there are three types of waste: solid, liquid, and gas. In general, organic waste is contributing the most to the amount of waste currently. One of the examples of solid waste, which comes from the agricultural process, is corncob. Corncob is often only used for animal feed or as a substitute for firewood in the absence of further treatment. These simple utilization of corncob, decrease either value of its usability or its economic value. One of the efforts to improve the usability and economic value of corncob is by processing it into bioenergy, such as bioethanol. The purpose of this study is to explore the bioethanol production process from corncob and to find out the level of purity of the ethanol, which is resulted from the same bioethanol production process. This study employed experimental as its design. The results expose that corncob can be used as the raw material for producing bioethanol which underwent several processes; pretreatment, hydrolysis for a day, fermentation for seven days, and four times of distillation process with the temperature of 52 -72,5 0 C and the pressure of 95,5 -107,3 mBar, which produce ethanol of 96%.