RANCANG BANGUN ROTARY DRUM BIOREACTOR UNTUK PRODUKSI MICROBIAL CELLULOSE

Microbial cellulose is the result of bacterial metabolism of Acetobacter xylinum in a liquid medium used. To grow and produce optimal microbial cellulose, Acetobacter xylinum bacteria requires oxygen for metabolism of glucose. Several studies conducted to obtain optimal results as a static method, RDR, bioreactor dye and spin reactor still has weakness in the tools design. To overcome this weakness a new tool called Rotary Drum Bioreactor (RDB) has been created. The design of Rotary Drum Bioreactor particularly aimed to overcome the weaknesses of the previous studies and to determine the best treatment using RDB in better producing of microbial cellulose. The study started on the selection tools and materials that will be used in designing the RDB tools, then proceed to design the tools to be able to work with four tools simultaneously that have different speeds in each fermentor including 2, 4,6 and 8 rpm, as the treatment with three replications and untreated comparison is static fermentation. The third phase was testing tools in producing microbial cellulose and then the data were analyzed statistically using analysis of variance followed by further test of Duncan’s New Multiple Range Test (DNMRT) at 5% level. The analysis showed that the speed of 2 rpm for 6 days of fermentation gave the best results including 95.02% moisture content, wet weight of 0.62 gr/ cm2 and yield 9.92%.