Acceleration of Bioetanol Production from

Seaweed (Gracilaria Sp.) as the Biofuel with

Zymomonas Mobilis to Increases Local
Fishermen Welfare
Ruth Febrina Aritonang
Fourth Semester
Chemical Engineering Diponegoro University
Tembalang Semarang, Jawa Tengah, Indonesia
Telp : 081338156162
ruthfebrina32@gmail.com

Abstract: Indonesia as the country with the largest sea area in the world has a high number of
fisherman. Naturally as an important part of the marine industry, fishermen's welfare has to be an
obligatory considered by the government. But in fact the condition of fishermen in Indonesia is really far
from good. The main problem of every fisherman in the entire Indonesia is the problem of fuel. In urban
areas fuel shortages often happened, even less in the area of residence of fishermen which is near the sea.
In addition to this problem, the price of fuel is sometimes unattainable by the fishermen.
Most of the given solution is to replace the fuel with the one that found around the fishermen. One of
them is seaweed. There have been many studies which found that seaweed contains polysaccharides and
bioactive compounds that could be developed into biofuel. This biofuel can substitutes the conventional
fuel and can be obtained easily.But the production of this biofuel is pretty slow. Therefore, the authors
offer solutions to accelerate the production of biofuels is by using bacteria Zymomonas mobilis.
Zymomonas mobilis is chosen because these bacteria have higher ability to convert glucose into
ethanol than similar bacteria such as Spyrogyra.sp. In addition it is also resistant to high levels of ethanol
and adaptable to many range of pH and temperature. This study will examine how Zymomonas mobilis is
used to accelerate the production of bioethanol as the biofuel that can be the future of fishermen welfare.
Keywords: bioethanol, biofuel, fisher, gracilaria, seaweed, zymomonas