(from left) Edwin Juanda Sirait, Mochammad Naufal Hakim, and Muhammad Dzaky Kamal, who are members of the Gryffindor team from the ITS Electrical Engineering Department

ITS Campus, ITS News – Also supporting the government’s commitment to realizing Indonesia Net Zero Emission 2060, three students from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) succeeded in initiating new innovations. Namely exploiting the potential of bamboo plants as fuel to replace coal in Steam Power Plants (PLTU).

The three are Muhammad Dzaky Kamal, Edwin Juanda Sirait, and Mochammad Naufal Hakim, who are members of the Gryffindor team. With the innovative idea outlined in an essay entitled Potential of Bamboo Plants as Co-Firing Fuel with Torrefaction Technology towards Indonesia’s Net Zero Emission 2060, bamboo waste commonly found in society is converted into biomass fuel for PLTU.

The Head of the ITS Gryffindor Team, Muhammad Dzaky Kamal, revealed that the innovation was brought up by his team’s findings, namely that bamboo has a calorific value that is almost the same as coal. With these findings, the Gryffindor team began researching using bamboo plants as Co-Firing fuel in PLTU.

The work scheme for applying Co-Firing with the torrefaction method in the Steam Power Plant (PLTU) was initiated by a team of students from the Department of Electrical Engineering ITS.

Co-firing is adding biomass as a partial replacement fuel or a mixture of coal for PLTU. The addition of biomass is expected to be a solution for the use of new renewable energy. “Furthermore, we are trying to innovate other biomass that comes from garbage or waste,” said the student, who is familiarly called Dzaky.

Through the torrefaction method, continued Dzaky, the team made by the Power System Simulation Laboratory (PSSL) of the Department of Electrical Engineering ITS managed to increase the heating value of bamboo by 30 per cent. Torrefaction is biomass combustion at a temperature of 200 degrees Celsius in oxygen-impermeable conditions.

The bamboo will be heated to 200 degrees Celsius at this torrefaction stage and then cooled. “From this torrefaction stage, we get a bamboo calorific value of 5,300, higher than coal’s value of only 5,100,” added Dzaky.

Through this innovation, the ITS Gryffindor team won third place in the Essay and Poster Competition CREATION 2022, which the Chemical Engineering Department, Diponegoro University, some time ago organized. This achievement was also not spared from the role of the team’s supervisor, Dr Ir Ni Ketut Ariyani MT.

With this achievement on a national scale, Dzaky hopes that this innovation can get a lot of support for its refinement process. So that in the future, the government can apply Co-Firing fuel in PLTU and reduce the impact of the existing carbon emission footprint. (ITS Public Relations)

Reporter: Mifda Khoirotul Azma