The Effect Of Variations In Starch Weight On The Manufacture Of Bioethanol From Plantain Waste (Musa Sapientum)

Abstract

Banana tree is a plant that thrives in Indonesia. In 1980, the total banana production in Indonesia was 1.9 million tons and in 2015 it increased significantly to 7.3 million tons (Center for Agricultural Data and Information, 2016). Banana tree waste such as weevils, stems and midribs is not utilized optimally, even though the starch content in the waste has the potential to be processed into glucose which is then fermented to produce bioethanol. The research variables were starch weight in weevils, stems and midribs of plantain (Musa Sapientum) trees. The process of making bioethanol consists of pretreatment, hydrolysis, fermentation and purification. Pretreatment consists of making starch in the three analyzed samples, then at various starch weights of 100gr, 150gr, 200gr, 250gr, and 300gr, hydrolyzed using 0.5N sulfuric acid and fermented for 4 days. The product after fermentation will be purified by a distillation process at a temperature of 80⁰C. The results showed that the levels of bioethanol obtained depend on the concentration of sulfuric acid added to the weight variations of the starch being hydrolyzed. In plantain weevil, it shows that in the 250 gram starch variation condition, the highest ethanol content obtained is 8.4432% and the refractive index is 1.33587. In plantain stems, the optimum dose of starch used was 250gr with ethanol content of 7.6422% and refractive index of 1.33298. In the last sample, the plantain tree midrib, the optimum dose was obtained at 250gr of starch with an ethanol content of 7.8732% and a refractive index of 1.33432.