Control System Application in The Production Unit of The MASARO Organic Liquid Fertilizer to Improve the Production Capacity
Akhmad Zainal Abidin (a*), Novita Sari Siregar (a), Agatha Cecilia Hutahaean (a), Elsye Veradika Yemensia (a), Mitra Djamal (b)

a) Chemical Engineering Department, Bandung of Institute Technology Jalan Ganesha 10, Bandung 40132, Indonesia*cheitb[at]che.itb.ac.id
b) Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Bandung of Institute Technology Jalan Ganesha 10, Bandung 40132, Indonesia *admin.fmipa[at]itb.ac.id

Abstract

While struggling against the COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesia faces a fundamental problem as now the food consumption demand is growing rapidly. In fact, 19.4 million people had to suffer from hunger in 2021. This is far from the government^s goals to pursue the food estate by land intensification as plant media in 2024. To accomplish the food estate, even Indonesia has a big chance to survive depending on natural sources. Moreover, about 86.5% of Indonesian farmers depend on inorganic fertilizers. That eventually will lead to environmental and economic problems. The viable option to solve these problems by applying MASARO (Manajemen Sampah Zero) to enhance the abundant organic waste as organic liquid fertilizer and improve the agricultural industry^s productivity.

MASARO is a waste management scheme that can manage waste until there is no residue (zero) by utilizing the waste into valuable products. POCI (Pupuk Organik Cair Istimewa) MASARO, an organic waste processing product, is made by enzymatically fermenting decomposing waste using the MASARO catalyst. The production of POCI is carried out in two fermentation stages where the carbohydrate and protein are converted into organic acid and amino acid on the first stage and continued with the amino acid decomposition on the second stage.

An important indicator of the complete fermentation process of POCI is pH which is required in the range 3.9 - 4.2 within four weeks. In fact, the fermented mixture only needed 6 to 12 days to reach the desired pH range after the production operation was done. By relying on time measurement, producing a maximum production rate will not be feasible. This research is conducted to implement in-line production control in POCI MASARO production process using Arduino, sensors, and transmitters as the control equipment. Arduino is a friendly-user open-source electronic prototyping platform for designing and creating an electronic device which takes input from switches and sensors. The sensor will read the detected pH number. This control system is equipped with an alarm to produce an audible alert sound from an active buzzer as reaching desired pH range. Through this research, the effective process of MASARO operation can be accomplished by reducing production time.

Keywords: Control, fertilizer, MASARO, pH

Topic: System and Applications