Evaluasi Waktu Start Up pada Proses Peruraian Limbah Stillage secara Anaerobik

Menggunakan Reaktor Fluidized Bed Kontinyu dengan Zeolit sebagai Media

Imobilisasi

Mohammad Faizal Ramadhan

Departemen Teknik Kimia Fakultas Teknik, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Jl. Grafika 2,
Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Extended Abstract

Wastewater of the ethanol industry is called stillage. Stillage contain large amount of
organic matter, so it can bring damage to the environment if it disposed directly into
environment. Stillage produced by a ethanol factory equal to 15-20 L stillage/ethanol which
produced with organic content which listed as soluble chemical oxygen demand (sCOD) equal
to 50.000-250.00 mg/L (Beltran and co., 2001 and Prakash and co., 2014. As stillage has large
amount of organic matter, but also contain large amount of toxic content, it has great potential
to be converted to biogas through anaerobic treatment process. Anaerobic fluidized Bed
Reactor (AFBR) is one of the reactor using the cell immobilization technique, which is one of
the technique that include in anaerobic treatment process. Immobilization medium that is
recommended used in this method is zeolite, because it can bind in the surface and has the
ability to adsorb heavy metal and toxic content (Fernadez and co., 2008). Start up is one of the
factor that influencing the success rate of digestion in AFBR.

Material that used in this research is stillage with sCOD concentration 228.000 mg/L
and 4.5 pH that was taken from PT Energi Agro Nusantara, natural zeolite which contain
klinoptilolite and modernite compound and also has characteristic of surface area equal to
15.178 m2/g, total pore volume equal to 40.778 x 10-3 cc/g, and pore radius average equal to
53,735 Å, which taken form Mojokerto East Java. Another material that used inoculum used
as stater which contain organic compound that is sCOD equal to 3035 mg/L, VFA 540,02 mg/L,
and also pH value of 7, which taken from KP4 UGM. Material for sCOD and VFA analysis is
laso required.

The method used in this research composed of 2 cycles with different cycle
concentration and done with recirculation batch. The first cycle is done in sCOD concentration
in early filling equal to 10.000 mg/L and the second cycle in sCOD concentration equal to
50.000 mg/L 20% of volume of the liquid which is 4.98 L. Filling is done with release 20% of
liquid in the reactor after the first cycle first, the substituted with fresh stillage with 50.00mg/L
concentration sCOD. In this phase, recirculation pump is activated and this phase last for
approximately 30 days for each cycle. VFA and sCOD analysis is done every 2 days, also gas
generated with sampling frequency of each day. Start up process of each cycle ended if drop
of sCOD is stable with fluaction less than 10% , gas generated is reducted, and VFA value is
dropping.

In the first cycle, it is simulate that in 7 days, accure drop value of sCOD that reach
50% of the sCOD in the beginning. After 10 days, drop value os sCOD is reducing and reach
constant value at it’s minimum. In the experiment, there is same trend until the 10 th day, which
the value of sCOD is increasing. This difference happen because there are dead
microorganism. The dead microorganism will decompose and affect sCOD value. Value of
sCOD is counted as the number of dissolved COD, active biomass, and iner particulate product
of dead and decomposed microorganism.

VFA value in reactor show indicator to predict failure of the process if the VFA value
is high, more than it’s inhibition value of 2000 mg/L (Westerholm and co., 2012). Simulation
show that VFA value raise significantly in the fifth day and started to drop in the tenth day.
VFA value will approach 0 and drop alittle in the fourteenth day. The raise in the VFA value
is caused by growing of asidogen bacteria that produce VFA, but will drop at some period
because VFA will be converted to metan gasses by metanogen bacteria. In the experiment,
there is same trend until the fourteenth day, which the calue of VFA started to increase again
and will constant at some high value. This difference happen because dead of metanogen
bacteria, which causing some VFA didn’t converted to meta gasses, which resulted in the high
VFA value.

The total accumulation of gas is also counted to predict the failure of the process caused
by accumulation of VFA value. If VFA high and low accumulation og biogas, there is failure
in the process. Simulation show that the raise of the gas production is significant, until the
fourteenth day, which after that only increase a little and reach constant value. This the same
phenomenon as in the VFA simulation, the increase of VFA value will reduce the production
of gas. From this, it is adviced to do start up for only 10 days, to avoid inhibition that caused
by dead of microorganism which causing the raise of VFA value.

In the second cycle, there is same trend in the simulation which is the value of sCOD
and VFA will continue to drop to minimum and reach constant point but it requires longer
times and biogas production will increase until someday. But in the experiment, the value of
sCOD and VFA continue in the high point and there is low production of gas. This is happen
because organic shock loading. The significant increase in the substrat concentration would
cause distruption in the growing process of biomass or biofilm production that started to
stabilize. Organic sock loading in the anaerobic decomposition will causing inefficiency of the
reduction of sCOD and VFA value. This is also caused by drop of pH value which affect the
growing of methan bacteria. From this, it can be concluded that concetration of sCOD equal
to 50.000 mg/L is too high in this experiment so it is can’t work with AFBR processing capacity.

It can be concluded with moderate early filling, the time limit to do the start up is 10
days and has optimal time of 7-10 days. Also, there is early concentration limit, which can’t be
measured because of lack of data in this experiment.

Reference

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