PEMBUATAN ETANOL FUEL GRADE DALAM KOLOM UNGGUN TETAP DENGAN ADSORBENT HYBRID ACTIVE GRANULATED ZEOLITE – SILIKA GEL

Abstract

Petroleum reserves in the world are dwindling, leading  to efforts to obtain renewable energy sources. Prospects of development of bioethanol industry in Indonesia is quite interesting, because Indonesia has a variety of natural resources that can be processed into bioethanol. Drying technology is currently used to produce ethanol fuel such as membranes, Pressure Swing Adsorption and vapor phase adsorption. Adsorption is a method that is simple and relatively inexpensive. This research aims at studying the characteristics of ethanol adsorption capacity by a mixture of zeolite and silica gel to the acquisition of ethanol concentration. The process of vapor phase adsorption of ethanol occurs in fixed bed column using a feed with a concentration of 93-95% ethanol. Ethanol fermentation first purified using a distillation process in the column packing material to get the concentration. Ethanol liquid feed is vaporized in the tank. Ethanol vapor then flowed into the fixed bed column containing a mixture of active zeolite and silica. Water vapor adsorbed by the adsorbent in the column stack of this bed. Ethanol vapor that not adsorbed is then condensed. Liquid ethanol results of the condensation process is fuel grade ethanol. The variables studied were weight ratio of zeolitesilica gel (g) (75:25; 50:50, and 25:75) and type in a structured or random piles. Sampling for analysis of ethanol levels done every 5 minutes for 30 minutes at a temperature of 12  C. The analysis was done by measuring the density of the solution condensation of the output of the column adsorber. In this research, obtained the highest ethanol content for this type of pile structured weight ratio zeolite: silica gel (g) respectively 75:25; 50:50, and 25:75 is the 99.2313% 99.5816%, and 99, 9582%. In a random pile of ethanol content obtained by 99.6363%, 98.3215% and 99.881%. The maximum ethanol content obtained on zeolite-silica gel ratio 25:75 for both structured and random mix. This is because the ratio of  Si/Al-silica gel is greater than the zeolite thus more effective in the adsorption of ethanol. And derived ethanol content in the stack is more stable than the unstructured random.