PALMOILMAGAZINE, BANDUNG – On Saturday, September 16, 2023, the hallowed halls of Institut Teknologi Bandung’s (ITB) West Wing resonated with the latest advances in academia. This enlightening event featured three distinguished professors hailing from different departments, each delivering a profound scientific oration in their respective fields.
One eagerly anticipated address was presented by Professor Gusti Bagus Ngurah Makertihartha of the Chemical Reaction Technology and Catalysis Department at FTI ITB, under the title, ‘Vegetable Fuels for National Energy Sovereignty.’”
Born on 15 January 1964, Prof. Makertihartha is full of experience in chemical engineering. He got his undergraduate degree in 1988 and got his doctoral degree from Universiteit Geint, Belgium in the same subject. Then he graduated from Chemical Engineering Professional Program of ITB in 2019.
For more than three decades, Prof. Makertihartha was actively as academy staff in Chemical Engineering ITB. He contributed much in chemical reaction technology research. He successfully published two books, 69 papers in the form of journal and proceeding in national and international scale, and 4 patent rights in national scale.
Also Read : UGM Professor Advocates Palm Oil-Cow Integrated Program for Sustainable Agriculture
In his oration, Prof. Makertihartha told that fossil fuel, namely crude oil and its derivative products are dominant in energy use in the world until now. The future projection showed that the trend would go on, at least, up to 30 years to go. In 2020, new renewable energy just contributed about 10% of energy consumption in the world totally. It is predicted, it would be reaching 59% in 2050.
In addition, Indonesia has big potential to substitute fossil fuel by vegetable fuel. Thanks to Indonesia for being the biggest palm oil producer in the world. “It is time to take for advantage vegetable oil sources that would highly contribute to energy sovereignty, independency, and security nationally,” he said, as Palmoilmagazine.com quoted from the official page of ITB, Saturday (23/9/2023).
In ITB, there are two main aspect to develop conversion technology of vegetable oil, they are, catalyst technology development and conversion process technology. Laboratorium Teknologi Reaksi Kimia dan Katalisis (Lab. TRKK) and Pusat Rekayasa Katalisis (PRK) ITB are in cooperation with many research institutions and industries in national scale to develop energy in vegetable fuel (oil) in palm oil and palm kernel – bases.
Vegetable oil conversion process technology to be vegetable fuel that ITB develops cover many processes, such as, biodiesel production through trans-esterification, bio-hydrocarbon diesel production and bio-hydrocarbon aviation turbine through hydrodeoxygenation and hydro-decarbonization. The mixed production of hydrocarbon fuel through hydrolysis, saponification and decarboxylation and cracking palm oil to be palm oil gasoline.
Catalyst development starts from laboratory scale before it would be produced in pilot project or in commerce. The catalyst synthesis starts from explorative process in laboratory scale to get active catalyst and if the outcome of the test is not the same with the target, synthesis would be repeated from formulation process or synthesis procedure improvement which was used.
Everything to develop would encourage fossil fuel substitution by vegetable fuel which derives from kinds of vegetable oil, not only palm oil. ITB as the center of skill in science and technology has the big potential to be the agent of development in new and renewable energy.
“Development process started and is on going and in the end, it would be a little spur from big waves of change heading to bio-economy sustainably and globally,” he said. (T2)
