Seaweed or algae are the largest part of marine plants.

According to Winarno (1990), Seaweed is currently one of the leading commodities of

aquaculture because its production is quite large and can help improve the economy of
coastal communities.
Seaweed in the Lampung area has begun to be cultivated. The most widely cultivated
seaweed in the Lampung area is the red seaweed Eucheuma cottonii.
This type of seaweed in Lampung is still very cheap at around Rp. 4,000.00 per kilogram for
wet seaweed, while dried seaweed reaches ten thousand rupiah per kilogram.

Seaweed is usually only used as an ingredient for making gelatin and other foods that have
low selling power, even though red seaweed can be processed into products that have very
high selling power, namely, processed into carrageenan (Nafed, 2011).

Carrageenan is a seaweed sap sourced from red seaweed in the form of sulfated
polysaccharides which have hydrocolloid properties so that they are widely used in food and
medicine products, cosmetics, textiles, paints, toothpastes, and other industries (Winarno,
1990).

The use of carrageenan in food products, among others, as a stabilizer, emulsifier, gelling and
thickener.

Carrageenan isolation procedures from various seaweeds have been developed. Generally,
this procedure consists of three stages of work, namely; extraction, filtration, and deposition
(Bachelor, 1998).

According to the Food Chemical Codex (1981), carrageenan can be separated from the
filtrate by freezing or precipitation by alcohol. However, precipitation with alcohol is very
expensive, besides that the quality of the carrageenan produced is still low, so in this study
KCl was used to minimize it.

Based on research by Arfini (2011) with KCl as a precipitating solution, the yield was
31.77%, water content was 9.73%, and ash content was 29.59%. From the explanation above,
the researcher will isolate the red seaweed Eucheuma cottonii into carrageenan by
precipitation method using an alkaline salt solution, namely KCl.

The procedure for the isolation of carrageenan compounds in this study was adopted from the
procedure carried out by Arfini, et al. (2011).
The research at this stage aims to determine the optimum concentration range of salt solution
for carrageenan separation. The variation of the concentration of the KCl solution in this
study was 1; 2; and 3%. The results of the gel formed can be seen in Table .

The concentration of 2% KCl solution was chosen as the best because the gel formed was
quite sturdy and hard, easily filtered or separated from the solution, and in the drying process
it only took about 15 hours and the yield produced was quite large, namely 29.2% which was
not much adrift with The yield produced in the precipitation of 3% KCl solution is 30.2%.

To determine the structure of the pure carrageenan compounds obtained, the obtained
carrageenan isolates were analyzed using an IR spectrophotometer. This IR analysis is
intended to ascertain (qualitatively) what groups are present in a compound. The results of
the characterization of carrageenan with 2% KCl solution using an IR spectrophotometer can
be seen in the following figure:

From the figure, it can be seen that there is a wide absorption which indicates the stretching
vibration characteristics of the O-H group in the 3448.72 cm-1 region, glycosidic bonds (C-
O-C) in the 1080.14 cm-1 region indicating the presence of a polysaccharide skeleton,
then there is a 3,6 anhydrogalactose bond in the 918.12 cm-1 region, galactose 4 sulfate in the
848.68 cm-1 region, and besides that, the sulfate ester group can also be seen in the 1234.44
cm-1 region.

From the results of the IR spectrum of carrageenan isolated, it can be said that the product
produced from this isolation is proven to be kappa carrageenan.

Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) is an analytical technique used to determine the thermal

stability of materials and volatile component fractions by calculating the weight change
associated with an increase in temperature. According to Kim et al (2005), in the
characterization process using TGA, an increase in temperature can result in a decrease in
molecular weight and then oligomers or monomers are formed. The results of carrageenan
characterization using TGA can be seen in the following figure:

From the figure, it can be seen that the results of the isolation of carrageenan with 2% KCl
solution showed that carrageenan underwent three stages of significant weight reduction in
the temperature range of 30oC to 650oC. In the first stage, the weight reduction of
carrageenan occurred in the temperature range of 30oC to 125oC by 14.14% which indicated
the process of losing water molecules bound to the carrageenan; in the second stage there was
a reduction in weight in the temperature range of 210oC to 330oC by 19.42% which indicated
where there was degradation of the carrageenan monomer, namely (1,3) D-galactose 4-sulfate
and (1,4) 3,6 anhydrous. -D-galactose. According to Sadeghi (2012), in general, carrageenan
is degraded in the temperature range of 220oC to 370oC; and the weight reduction stage
occurred at a temperature of 380oC to 620oC by 18.86% which indicated the decomposition
of carbon residues in carrageenan.