Liquid smoke is one of the coconut commodities that is composed through the pyrolysis process. It is customary to be used in a wood preservative and coagulant, antimicrobial, and natural food preservative substitute for formalin or borax often misused as a food preservative. Nevertheless, in Indonesia, many liquid smoke processing industries occurred, but unfortunately, some MSMEs only have limited innovation tools to produce high-quality liquid smoke.
Based on this problem, five students from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA) UGM consisting of Nur Hidayah, Dwi Rahmasari Fatmawati, Dewi Rizqiyana, Aldi Riyanto, and Sabda Alam and supervised by a Lecturer at the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences UGM, Mokhammad Fajar Pradipta, S.Si., M.Eng., initiated to design a technology tool for a liquid smoke redistillation to improve the quality of liquid smoke. This design concept also successfully received grant funds through the Ministry of Education and Culture's Technology Application Student Creativity Program (PKM T).
Nur Hidayah, as the team leader, revealed that the liquid smoke redistillation technology proposed enhancing the quality of smoke by clearing the liquid smoke product. Hence, later, there will be a result of liquid smoke in grade 2 and 1 liquid smoke with a better functional value than grade 3 liquid smoke. However, there is a difference in this technology design compared to existing technology is the addition of a zeolite column, which helps filter dangerous compounds in liquid smoke. "In the zeolite column, there will be a filtering process for dangerous compounds contained in liquid smoke," said Nur Hidayah on Thursday (19/11).
This technology consists of a distillation tube, two condenser tubes, and a zeolite column. There will be a heating process and detachment of the compounds in the liquid smoke in the distillation tube based on the difference in the boiling points of these compounds. In addition, there will be a process of converting the compound from vapor to liquid again, resulting in liquid smoke in the condensation tube.
There are other components used to manufacture this tool, such as food-grade distillation tubes, stainless steel condenser tubes, food-grade stainless steel spiral pipes, granular zeolite, water faucets, condenser pumps, and PVC pipes. He added that this redistillation technology fully aims to help MSMEs in processing liquid smoke in Indonesia. Accordingly, the resulting liquid smoke will have high quality and compete with other smoking products and food preservatives.
Author: Gusti Grehenson