Prospect of Essential Oil Industrial Waste as Energy Resources for Essential Oil Production Process

Abstract

Essential oil production produces huge amount of solid waste. This un-utilized waste potentially causing environmental problems. Converting the waste into biomass briquettes (bio briquette) is one of the prosperous solutions since the briquettes can be used as energy source for the production activities in those industry. The objective of this study is converting the solid waste of essential oil production from nutmeg and clove stems into bio-briquette form, and to analyze the potency of those bio-briquette to fulfill energy demand for essential oil production process itself. Several various compositions have been taken to get best performance of the bio-briquettes as fuel. The ratio of mass and adhesive were 1:0.625; 1:0.75; 1:1; 1:1.25 for nutmeg cakes, 1:0.75; 1:0.825; 1:1; 1:1.25 for nutmeg shell charcoal, and 1:0,5; 1:0.625; 1:0.75; 1:1 for clove stem charcoal. The best results was performed by nutmeg shell charcoal briquettes with composition of 1: 1. This briquette has moisture content of 6.64%, ash content of 3.31%, and a calorific value of 5497 cal/gram. Those specification meets the requirements of SNI 1/6235/2000 regarding briquettes as a fuel. Based on energy demand calculation, implementation of those briquettes as fuel will reduce annually solid fuel consumption around 30%. The reduction will help to reduce essential oil production cost, and help the product to get “green product” label, which is very important for all products in the global market.