Utilization of Waste Diapers As Bioethanol, Alternative Solutions to Solve Waste Garbage Problems

Preface

The use of disposable diapers that are rampantly sold in the market is very useful to facilitate the mother in taking care of the baby, so it does not require a long time and efficient and easy to carry cause disposable diapers easily accepted as an alternative to ordinary pants in absorbing the baby’s urine waste. However, the use of disposable diapers causes serious environmental problems, such as garbage from the diapers themselves, if for example in a day a baby to urinate 3 times with the weight of diapers about 0.25 kilogram diaper garbage at least a diaper from a baby for 1 year around 270 kilograms. The of outer layer of diapers made from synthetic materials that can withstand leakage of fluids is difficult in degradation by soil bacteria and the layers are designed to absorb high so easily absorb rain water causing diaper waste is relatively difficult to burn.

The of outer layer of diapers made from synthetic materials that can withstand leakage of fluids is difficult in degradation by soil bacteria and the layers are designed to absorb high so easily absorb rain water causing diaper waste is relatively difficult to burn.
Piles of plastic and cloth waste

Baby diapers use plastics and cotton chemicals that break down after 200-500 years, even other sources say baby diapers can not decompose. During its lifetime, one baby needs 6000 disposable diapers up to the age of three and the number of live births based on the 2004 population census is 4.4 million. When it is assumed that all infants use disposable diapers, the baby’s diaper trash reaches approximately 26 billion diapers. These figures can clearly damage and harm the environment. From the data (daily Surya, October 13, 2013) that the main contributor of river pollution is plastic waste and baby diaper waste. With these conditions it is necessary to have special handling for baby diaper trash, one way to overcome the waste of baby diapers is to make baby diapers waste into another material that is more useful ie bioethanol fuel.

Result
The steps to make it  are follows. A total of 0.1 Kg of baby diaper garbage is cleaned and separated with plastic parts, fan that has been clean cut into pieces and soaked with 1 liter of water. The next step is hydrolysis of cellulose by using an acid solution of H2SO4 1 N solution with a volume of 40 ml in a three-neck flask equipped with a cooling back and heated to a temperature of 100 ° C for 2.5 hours or so-called reflux process. This process aims to break down cellulose molecules into smaller molecules that are glucose.
The next step is hydrolysis of cellulose by using an acid solution of H2SO4 1 N solution with a volume of 40 ml in a three-neck flask equipped with a cooling back and heated to a temperature of 100 ° C for 2.5 hours or so-called reflux process. This process aims to break down cellulose molecules into smaller molecules that are glucose.
The soaked of diapers

After that the reflux results are left to equal to the room temperature. The result of hydrolysis in neutralized with the addition of NaOH arranged pH between 4-6, then added EM4 fermentor which is useful as chemical preteatment process besides H2SO4 usage. The result of the refluxed solution was added as much as 3 EM4 fermentor bottle caps to leave in room temperature for three days. The next stage is fermentation by filtrate as much as 1 liter into a plastic bottle and added 5 grams of yeast Saccharomyces cereviseae Then incubation by closing the bottle to create anaerobic conditions at temperatures ranging from 27-30o C for 6 days. At 48 to 144 hours the resulting alcohol increases as the activity of microbial in yeast grows to a maximum.

From the distillation product for one hour, ethanol 70 ml distillation results and measured using alcoholmeter showed that the ethanol content obtained was 1.25%.
Distillation Process

Baby diapers are a household waste that is difficult to decompose and large enough amount of plastic waste besides, the behavior of people who throw garbage carelessly and do not bother making waste baby diapers cause many problems, in addition to damaging the beauty and smell, baby diapers also cause problems in the water or in the ground.

From the results of research for 1 kg of baby diaper waste produce bioethanol of 700 ml with a content of 1.25%. More and more baby diapers are used as more ethanol results are obtained. If it is assumed that the amount of disposable baby diapers to 100 Kg per day will produce 70 Liter of alcohol and with the residential technique will continue in alcohol can be used as fuel for gasoline replacement, thus reducing dependence on fossil fuels and the problems caused baby diapers can be resolved

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