The Alcedo team, consisting of three students from the 2018 FMIPA UI Biology Undergraduate Program, namely Rizky Rahmadhani, Sevita Sathya, and Seruni Salsabila, won third place in the competition. Energy Idea Competition which is poured into an abstract form, in the event International Science & Technology Fair (INSITEF) 2021. This event was organized by the Mechanical Engineering Student Association of Pertamina University.
Taking up the theme of renewable energy, the Alcedo Team created an abstract with the title: Effect of Concentration of Mixture of Liquid Waste from Oil Palm Plantation (Palm Oil Mill Effluent/Pome and Corn Cob Extract in Chlorella Vulgaris Microalgae Culture Medium on Microalgae Biomass as Bioethanol Producer.
Rizky, as the leader of the Alcedo team, explained that the background behind the creation of this abstract was the result of brainstorming by the three of them who thought that it was impossible to only bring ideas about species. Mikroalga Chlorella Vulgaris in producing bioethanol, but there must be other innovations brought.
“If we bring that (Mikroalga Chlorella Vulgaris) alone, nothing stands out and has no distinctive features. Finally, our idea came to add corn cob waste and palm oil waste as a medium for the growth of species. Mikroalga Chlorella Vulgaris ini,” papar Rizky.
Having successfully eliminated several teams in the preliminary round, Team Alcedo’s struggle continued to the video-making round which was participated by the remaining ten teams. In the video, Team Alcedo explained further about the steps of using corn cobs as an innovation that they brought to this competition.
“Before use, the corn cobs were washed first using deionized water and dried in an oven for 48 hours. Then the corn cobs were ground into a fine powder using a blender. To obtain corn cob extract, 60% ethanol was added to the corn cob powder, then shaken in an incubator for 48 hours. The corn cob extract was then filtered with a membrane filter to separate the residue and the ethanol was evaporated at 70℃ for 5 hours and cooled at 4℃ or lower. Finally, the corn cob extract can be diluted to the specified concentration according to the experimental plan,” citing the Alcedo team video published on the page Instagram INSITEF.
The video then successfully brought Team Alcedo to the final round in the form of a presentation followed by the five best teams. In the final round which was held on June 30, 2021, they ended the competition by winning third place.
This success was responded positively by one of the team members, Sevita Sathya. She hopes that in the future more FMIPA UI students will be interested in conducting experiments and dare to bring their experiments to a competition.
“Sometimes it’s also sad to see it. We are in a faculty that is very much involved with experiments and writing reports on experimental results, but many of the students are still afraid to do experiments, because they are afraid of being wrong, afraid of failing, and other fears. Hopefully, in the future, there will be more FMIPA UI students who are willing to experiment and are not afraid to bring them to a competition,” said Sevita.
Article compiled by FMIPA UI Public Relations Contributor: Theo Andita Nugraha (Statistics 2017)
