Brawijaya Students Use Slaughterhouse Waste to Create Electricity
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20 June 2019 08:21 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Three students from Brawijaya University of Malang, East Java managed to create an instrument that transforms slaughterhouse waste to electricity which they dubbed the “Shower” or slaughterhouse wastewater.
The team mentored by lecturer Ani Setianingrum comprises of Hendra Surawijaya, Elfahra Casanza Amada (faculty of veterinary medicines) and Rizhaf Setyo Hartono (Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences).
“Advancing electrical energy currently makes more use of solar cells, wind, heat, and water. However, those developments still has its weaknesses that can introduce environmental damage, overheating, weather dependant, and high costs for its infrastructure,” said Hendra Suwawijaya who acts as the team leader on Tuesday, June 18.
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Based on that, he said, he and two of his colleagues collaborated and agreed to use slaughterhouse water waste as an alternative source of electrical energy. This research was funded by the Research, Technology, and Higher Education Ministry.
How Shower works are by turning the bacteria found in slaughterhouse wastewater is through an agar salt bridge where the slaughterhouse waste is accommodated into a vessel and is mixed with (EM4) effective microorganism 4 to eliminate the bad odor. It is then added with Mannitol salt agar and electrolyte salt that would oxidize the substrate and produce electrons and protons to the anodes.
The team hopes that their innovation could be an answer to the challenge of creating an electricity source that has zero waste and reduces pollution. Hendra explained that in the current form, each of the Shower’s cell creates 0.1 watts of electricity and would need 100 cells to power a 10 watt light bulb.
ANTARA