Ramadhita Putra Purnomo (left) and Bryllian Michael Haholongan Kendek, a team of ITS Chemical Engineering students who won 1st place in the 2024 Improvement and Innovation Award event

ITS Campus, ITS News — The increasing need for household electricity has led to the need for innovation in renewable energy sources as a substitute for fossil fuels that are increasingly depleted. Departing from this problem, a team of students from Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) created an environmentally friendly energy source from oil sludge waste bacteria.

ITS Gasoileum Team Leader Ramadhita Putra Purnomo explained that oil sludge is one of the wastes produced from the processing and storage of crude oil. If the waste is to be disposed of, special treatment is needed so that the waste does not pollute the environment and often requires the assistance of a third party to manage it. “The costs used to involve a third party are also not small,” explained the young man who is usually called Rama.

With this background, Rama and his colleague Bryllian Michael Haholongan Kendek also looked for a way out so that companies in the oil and gas industry could save operational costs from waste management. Finally, the oil sludge waste was studied and it was found that there were Pseudomonas Aeruginosa bacteria as microbial fuel cells (MFC) which have the potential to produce electrical energy from electrons resulting from the decomposition of nutrient glucose by bacteria.

Ramadhita Putra Purnomo when making a mixture of oil sludge waste with nutrients from kitchen waste to produce a bio-electrochemical system.

In line with Rama, Bryllian Michael Haholongan Kendek explained that to produce electricity, the bacteria need to be mixed first with nutrients from household waste, such as vegetables or fruits. Initially, the household waste is cut separately into small pieces and mixed with hydrochloric acid (HCl). “The goal is to break down the glucose nutrient molecules into smaller ones,” added the young man who is familiarly called Ian.

Next, continued Ian, the nutrients and mud are put into a 1,000 milliliter tube that has been fitted with a multimeter anode and cathode. The mixture is arranged to form three layers of parts with a ratio of 1:3. From this mixture, a bio-electrochemical system will then occur that converts glucose nutrients into electrons by the MFC. “These electrons then produce voltage and electric current,” said the student from the ITS Chemical Engineering Department.

The results of the ITS Gasoileum team’s research show that the Pseudomonas Aeruginosa bacteria are capable of producing 21 watts of electrical energy.

Furthermore, Ian said that it takes up to seven days to get maximum electrical potential. In the seventh time span, the electrical energy produced by these bacteria reached 21 watts or equivalent to the power to light a flashlight. In addition, the coulombic efficiency or electrochemical efficiency reached 5.16 percent and 1.49 percent.

The satisfactory research results have also led Rama and Ian to become the first place winner in the 2024 Forum Improvement & Innovation Award (IIA) some time ago. In the future, the Gasoileum team also hopes that this research can be developed on a larger scale so that new energy from MFC can be implemented immediately. “Hopefully our research will also be a spur for other students to initiate new energy from other waste,” concluded Ian hopefully. (ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS)

Reporter: Nabila Hisanah Yusri