Fermentation of Waste Pineapple Peel as Electricity Source

Abstract

Indonesia is a country that uses a lot of coal as a source of energy for power plants. It is not comparable to the availability of coal that is likely to be depleted. The way to solve this problem is by utilizing the waste pineapple peel. Pineapple (Ananas comocus) is a type of tropical plant that is widely grown in Prabumulih, South Sumatera. Waste pineapple peel is acidic because it contains acetic acid, ascorbic acid, citric acid and glucose so that it can generate electricity. The method used to generate electrical energy is fermentation because the oxidation reaction in fermentation process will increase the rate of acidity of waste pineapple peel. The process is followed by grinding the waste pineapple peel and moved into 4 containers with each container contains 200 mL of waste pineapple peel. Then, add 4 grams of yeast into each container. The anaerobic fermentation needs 4 days for alcoholysis process and oxidation process time of each container will be made differently in order to get the strongest electricity. The oxidation process for sample one is one day, sample two is two days, sample three is three days and the sample four is four days. This experiment explained the effect of variation of oxidation time with pH and voltage test in 1 serie circuit and 4 series circuits. The results show that sample 4 has the lowest pH and highest voltage. The optimum voltage in 1 serie circuit is 1 volt and 4 series circuit is 3.9 volts with pH 3.