Fossil energy sources is running low. It will greatly affect our need for transportation, industry, electricity and many more. This has risen the need to innovate more on any potential renewable energy sources. One of the options that we have is biogas. Utilization of biogas energy sources has begun to be developed at the PandanMulyo Agriculture and Rural Training Center in NgentakPoncosariSrandakan, Bantul. The production capacity is quite limited. Using manual and simpleequipment need extra energy only to adjust additional water and stir cow dung so that it can continue to produce biogas. To improve biogas production, students of UNY develop automatic biogas equipment using hybrid power based on IOT (Internet of Things).
NenengThoyyibah (Mechatronics Engineering Education), ArdiJatiNugrohoPutro and DwiSarwanto(Mechanical Engineering Education), Muhamad NurAzis (Civil Engineering Education and Planning), and AmaliaRohmah (Electronic Engineering), designed a device called Biothings V2. According to NenengThoyyibah, the idea to develop this equipment is set on the fact that low biogas production can only be used for simple household purpose. It is almost impossible to be used as reliable energy for culinary business. “The manual method that has been used previously unfortunately failed to set the right temperature for optimal biogas production. Furthermore, it take more effort simply to mix and stir water and cow dung. ,” Neneng said.
According to AmaliaRohmah, biogas production can be started automatically starting from the measurement and mixing stage by using Biothings V2. "We can also regulate the right temperature to produce biogas to be more optimal," she said.The sensors on this device can be controlled using a smartphone while the energy needed to activate Biothings V2 uses hybrid power, so it saves energy.
For Ardi Jati NugrohoPutro, developing Biothings V2 is quite challenging. They started with literature study on the supporting components of this automatic biogas-producing device. "The next step is to design the physical device, both the electrical and physical circuit design, the design of the device includes the assembly of tools, the circuit and the physical form of the tool," said Ardi. The design that has been made is continued by compiling a list of equipment component purchases. Then enter the assembly stage, so that this tool can be immediately made to be applied in making biogas to be more optimal.DwiSarwanto explained, in Biothings, there are several parts of the equipment, namely the sensor device for measuring water and cow dung to measure the mixing of cow dung with water automatically. The sensor used for cow dung is a Load Cell, while the sensor for water is a water level control (WLC).While the temperature and humidity sensors used are DHT11. Temperature and humidity sensors are inserted into the tube containing cow water dung earlier. This sensor is used to control temperature and humidity. For temperature monitoring, DHT11 is connected to a smartphone using ESP8266 and can be accessed by the internet.
This work won funding from the Directorate of Higher Education in the Student Creativity Program in the Application of Technology in 2019. (Dedy; Tj.Lak)
