Alcohol dehydration of palm sugar (Arrenga pinnata) from Lalolae Village, East Kolaka, Southeast Sulawesi

Abstract

This research aimed to obtain ethanol from fermented palm sugar with high purity. There are two main techniques used in this study to increase the purity of alcohol, namely modified multilevel distillation and the use of molecular sieve as the principal dehydrator agent. The process carried out to produce ethanol uses a distillation and dehydration process, with raw materials fermented using Saccharomyces cerevisiae and traditional technology. At first, prepare two column reflux distillation apparatus had been designed and constructed successfully to prepare bio ethanol. The sugar content of palm sugar used was 12.4%. Bioethanol is produced from 10% inoculum concentration and variations in fermentation time of 12 hours, 24 hours 36 hours, and 48 hours at pH 5. The results of measurement using alcoholmeter, the highest alcohol concentration was obtained at the condition of 36 hours fermentation time by 9%. The distillation and dehydration process is carried out continuously at a distillation temperature of 79 °C with a mass of 20 gram molecular sieves. The results of measurement of alcoholmeter obtained bioethanol levels of 54%.