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Energy Procedia 65 (2015) 324 – 330

Conference and Exhibition Indonesia - New, Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation
(The 3rd Indo-EBTKE ConEx 2014)

Feasibility Study on the Production of Bioethanol from Tapioca

Solid Waste to Meet the National Demand of Biofuel
Ruri Agung Wahyuonoa,b*, Muhammad Naufal Hakima, Surya Alam Santosoa
a
Department of Engineering Physics, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS), Campus ITS Sukolilo Surabaya, 60111
b
Laboratory of Energy and Environmental Engineering, Dept. of Engineering Physics, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS),
Campus ITS Sukolilo Surabaya, 60111

Abstract

This study aims to assess the potential ethanol produced by employing tapioca solid waste to support energy demand in
Indonesia. A bioethanol process was simulated under bioactivity process using Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Reduced sugar and
polysaccharide were used as essential substrate. The simulation result indicate that SSF requires (59 to 62) h and overall process
. 3
takes approximately seven days. Having averagely 564 414.7 t • yr–1 of tapioca solid waste, it is possible to produce 57.793 10
kL • yr–1. This number could contribute to the 1.89 % and 33.41 % of bioethanol demand according to Ministry of Research and
Technology and Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resource, respectively.
©
© 2015
2015TheR.A.Authors. Published
Wahyuono, M.N.byHakim,
ElsevierS.A.
Ltd.Santoso.
This is anPublished
open access
byarticle under
Elsevier the CC BY-NC-ND license
Ltd.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of EBTKE ConEx 2014.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of EBTKE ConEx 2014
Keywords: bioethanol; process simulation; simultaneous saccharification and fermentation; tapioca solid waste

Nomenclature

CSubst consentration of substrate (g/L) t ton = 103 kg

CProd consentration of product (g/L) yr year
P growth rate (g/L) d day

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +62 857 3372 1691; fax: +62 31 592 3626.
E-mail address: ruri_tf014@yahoo.com

1876-6102 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of EBTKE ConEx 2014
doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2015.01.060
 Ruri Agung Wahyuono et al. / Energy Procedia 65 (2015) 324 – 330 325

ks substrate constant (g/L) h hour

ySubst yield on substrate (g/g)
yProd yield on product (g/g)
mProd product rate constant (g/g/hr)
msubst substrate rate constant (g/g/hr)

1. Introduction

Indonesian fuel demand is recently about 4.107 kL • yr–1, and expected to increase upto 7.7.107 kL • yr–1 by 2018
[1]. To date 90 % of energy needs is fulfilled by fossil fuel which is explored and exploited from a non-renewable
energy resource. Pertinent to the effort of reducing CO2 emission, alternative fuel such as biodiesel and bioethanol
need to be considered to substitute and replace the role of fossil fuel.
Recently ethanol can be employed as fuel by mixing with fossil fuel in ratio of 15:85 as an attempt to reduce the
use of fossil fuel. According to energy road map released by Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resource (MEMR) the
need of ethanol from 2014 to 2020 is of 2.4.104 kL • d–1. Therefore, supplementary source of ethanol is needed.
Bioethanol is a type of ethanol which is obtained from living of biological materials. There are many kind of
biological material that can be utilized to produce bioethanol, such as cassava, sweet potato, corn, rice, and
sugarcane [2-4]. However, those materials have crucial function as primary food commodities in Indonesia. It is
stated on the Republic of Indonesian Law No. 8 year 2012 that using food commodity as energy source raw
materials is not allowed if it is threaten the food security. Thus, there have been many efforts to gain alternative
energy source from industrial waste such as, banana peel, rice straw, palm empty bunch, and tapioca solid waste
[5-7].
Tapioca solid waste is a solid waste from tapioca flour production that cultivated from cassava. It is one of the
most potential biological materials from industrial waste for bioethanol production owing to its content of
polysaccharide and reduced sugar (details is presented on Table 1.).

Table 1. Essential content of tapioca solid waste [8]

Compound Content (%)

Water content 9.04
Fiber 21
Polysaccharide 37.7
Reduced sugar 31.3
Protein 0.96

Production of cassava in Indonesia is the second largest food commodity with total production approximately
23.106 t • yr–1 and ranked 17 in the world in cassava production. The average annual production of tapioca solid
waste in Indonesia is adequately high, i.e. more than 6.105 t • yr–1. Therefore, this waste availability can be processed
as bioethanol sources. This study presents the feasibility of bioethanol production employing tapioca solid waste as
raw materials which is projected to support national biofuel demand.

2. Method

The study was first conducted by collecting data, i.e. national harvested cassava, representing availability of
feedstock on bioethanol process. The data of total harvested cassava was collected from Center Statistical Bureau
from 2007 to 2013. The number of cassava produced in 2014 was estimated by using polynomial regression, i.e.
polynomial order is based on the best correlation and determination coefficient obtained in the regression model.
326 Ruri Agung Wahyuono et al. / Energy Procedia 65 (2015) 324 – 330

The total of potential cultivated cassava was reduced by clustering the data based on the use of cassava, whether it is
consumed for primary food comodity or not, to avoid interfering food security as mentioned in RI Law No. 8 of
2012. Number of tapioca solid waste was calculated by using simple calculation from statistical data of 2007 which
states that 11.4 % of tapioca production (26.01 % of total harvested cassava) yields as tapioca solid waste.

Waste
Waste
gas
“Onggok” O ng gok : water = 1:3 gas
Water ST-010 80 mM HCl Water
Steam (125°C) Ammonia
P-010 HE-020
RT-010 HE-010 V-020
BT-010 RT-020

Ammonia
Waste gas Waste gas
HE-021 Nutrien
Enzyme
RT-021 BT-020 RD-030
C-030
C-031 RD-031
Ammonia
HE-022
Enzyme Ethanol 99,5%
Nutrien HE-031
DT-031
RT-022 V-021 BT-021 HE-030
BT-030
DT-030
R-031
R-030 Waste Water Waste Water
Waste Water

Fig. 1. Scheme of semi-batch bioethanol production plant utilizing tapioca solid waste in feed stream.

The bioethanol production was modeled as in Fig. 1. It comprised of pretreatment, simultaneous saccharification
and fermentation, and distillation and purification. Pretreatment stage (green line) comprising hydrolysis converted
carbohydrates within the feed stream into reduced and soluble sugars. The feed was subsequently heated by adding
steam and HCl to obtain the best condition of thermally acid hydrolysis. The best condition reported for acid
hydrolysis was 1 : 3 tapioca solid waste to water ratio slurry [9] with additional 80 mM HCl and steam to reach
temperature of 125 °C. At these conditions, total yield of the saccharification is approximately 75 % of total
carbohydrates.
In the preliminary of SSF (orange line), the output of pretreatment was first neutralized with ammonia so as to
S. cerevisiae could grow beneath the lower acidity condition. It was then passed through a heat exchanger to reach
the 60 °C of saccharification and fermentation temperature. Saccharification involved gluco amylase at 150 mg · L–1
for 3 h [9] and fermentation with S. cerevisiae requires nutrient, e.g. urea and NPK. The products from SSF reactor
was finally flowed through a vessel. The kinetics of simulataneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) stage
was also modeled [10]. This process was modeled by undertaking bioactivity process with S. cerevisiae. Physical
and chemical process was formulated as follow:

dC Subst § 1 · (1)
¨¨ P ˜ s  m Subst ¸¸ x
dt y (
© Subst S k  s ) ¹
dC P rod § y P rod · (2)
¨¨ P ˜ s  m P rod ¸¸ x
dt © kS  s ¹
dx P ˜s (3)
x
dt k S  s

The initial conditions and value of some SSF parameters was taken from the earlier findings [9-12]. The
purification separates the yield of SSF into water and anhydrous ethanol. Distillation and molecular sieve adsorption
are used to obtain ethanol of 99.5 % ethanol. Distillation was undertaken by two columns. The first column removes
the dissolved CO2 and most of the water. The second concentrates ethanol resulted from the first column to a near
azeotropic composition.
 Ruri Agung Wahyuono et al. / Energy Procedia 65 (2015) 324 – 330 327

3. Results and discussion

The results of kinetics modeling of SSF stage is presented in Fig. 2. The simulation was undertaken by
considering two substrate conditions, i.e. only reduced sugars and carbohydrate – reduced sugars involved within the
process. The conversion of reduced sugars to ethanol is presented in Fig. 2(a). The results shows that the SSF takes
(59 to 60) h to be completed whilst Fig. 2(b) shows a slightly longer time of SSF (62 h) due to the process consider
both reduced sugars and carbohydrate as essential substrate of fermentation.

100
100
80
60
40 Substrate 80
Fermentation Species (gL-1)

Ethanol
20
Conversion

Conversion (%)
60

40

20

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time (h)

(a)
100
80
60
40 Conversion 100

Substrate
Fermentation Species (gL-1)

20
Ethanol 80 Conversion (%)

60

40

20

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time (h)
(b)

Fig. 2. Kinetics of SSF stage of bioethanol processing using essential subtrate comprising of
(a) reduced sugars and (b) reduced sugars and polysaccharide within tapioca solid waste.

According to the earlier finding [9,12], the fermentation stage requires (3 to 6) d and yield (3.912 to 10) % of
ethanol. It is fairly comparable to the simulation result of SSF kinetic modeling that was done in this study [14,15].
The utilization of tapioca solid waste as raw materials of bioethanol production shows a promising potential
compared to other waste materials (details are listed in Table 2).
328 Ruri Agung Wahyuono et al. / Energy Procedia 65 (2015) 324 – 330

Table 2. Estimated yield of ethanol from tapioca solid waste compared to other raw material.

Ref Raw material Essential substrate Time (h) Yield of ethanol

[13] Whey and banana peel Glucose 4.21 % and 12.3 % 24 2.040 %
[5] Banana peel Carbohydrate 18 % 48 9.792 %
[7] Palm empty ruit bunches Cellulose 45 % 120 9.689 %
- Tapioca solid waste* Reduced sugars and carbohydrate (31.3 % and 37.7 %) 59 to 62 15.68 %
* The essential substrates is used as dependence variables in multivariate linear regression to obtain the estimated yield of ethanol.

Assessment result of tapioca solid waste as feed stock of bioethanol production is presented to describe the
availability of raw materials. Total amount of national harvested cassava has been reported to be increasing from
2007 to 2013. The average annual national harvested cassava is reported as 23 026 381 t. However, this potential is
further clustered, i.e. Lampung, East Java, Central and West Java, to agree with the condition under RI Law No. 8
year 2012 that the use of cassava should not threat the food security. Therefore, the possible further cultivated
cassava is estimated as 19 035 909 t. Counting from the potential cultivated cassava, amount of tapioca solid waste is
estimated to be 564 414.7 t • yr–1 yielding bioethanol of 54 398.3 kL • yr–1.

7 5
x 10 x 10

Estimated Amount of Onggok (Ton)

3 6
Total Cassava produced in Indonesia
Potential Cassava for Further Process
4
2.5

2
Amount of Cassava (Ton)

0
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
1.5 4
x 10
6
Ethanol Production (kL)

1 5.5

5
0.5
4.5

0 4
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Year Year

Fig. 3. (a) Statistical representation of national harvested and potentially cultivated cassava;
(b) Estimated amount of tapioca solid waste and the potentially produced bioethanol.

(a) (b)

Fig. 4. Contribution of bioethanol from tapioca solid waste to support national ethanol demand based on
(a) National energy roadmap and (b) MEMR.
 Ruri Agung Wahyuono et al. / Energy Procedia 65 (2015) 324 – 330 329

Pertain to the national bioethanol demand this number could contribute up to 33.4 % of bioethanol demand as
targeted by Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resource (total bioethanol production at least could reach 1.73 .105 kL in
the end of 2014). Compared to the roadmap of energy sector development by Ministry of Research and Technology,
the national bioethanol demand from 2014 to 2020 is 3.05.106 kL • yr–1. This potential would save the use of fossil
fuel in Indonesia by 0.35 % under the assumption that all potential of full grade ethanol is used to be mixed with
fuel under ratio of 15:85 (E15).

4. Conclusions

The preliminary of feasibility study on bioethanol production utilizing tapioca solid waste was presented within
this paper. The simulation of bioethanol process, particularly SSF stage, requires approximately (59 to 62) h and
overall process takes approximately seven days. Based on the analysis of clustered cassava potential production, the
average of national tapioca solid waste production is approximately 564 414.7 t • yr–1 resulting to average of
potential fuel grade ethanol of 57.793.103 kL • yr–1. This number could contribute to the 1.89 % and 33.41 % of
bioethanol demand according to Energy Road Map released by Ministry of Research and Technology and Ministry
of Energy and Mineral Resource, respectively. Nevertheless, further analysis is needed to consider the economical
feasibility in order to acquire complete assessment of optimal bioethanol production utilizing tapioca solid waste.

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