Temperature Control System for Ethanol Refinery Condenser in Cooking Oil Production Mini Plant

Continuous counter-current extraction is a type of liquid-liquid extraction that utilizes a vertical column to remove impurities from raw materials by bringing them into contact with a solvent. In this study, crude palm oil (CPO) is used as the raw material and ethanol is used as the solvent to clean the impurities from the CPO. The output produced from the extraction process is safe cooking oil and impurities from CPO mixed with ethanol. The ethanol mixed with the impurities can be reused for extraction by separating it from the impurities using the distillation process. The low boiling point of ethanol allows it to evaporate and condense back into a liquid using a condenser. For the condensed ethanol to have room temperature, a condenser is required that uses water as a heat exchange medium. In this study, the design and construction of a temperature control system for the condenser are carried out using an RTD PT100 sensor with 99% accuracy. Additionally, the ethanol that has been distilled is measured by a DS18B20 temperature sensor with an accuracy of 97%. The control system in this final project successfully reduced the water temperature from 27°C to 6.5°C in 16 minutes