LOCALIZING SOY FIBER PRODUCTION FROM TOFU DREGS TO REDUCE IMPORT DEPENDENCY: A PILOT STUDY USING COAL-FUELED TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Tofu dreg has excellent potential as a source of dietary fiber and is used as a raw material for the Food and Beverage industry to produce added value products. Indonesia is an importer of soy fiber. Commanditaire Vennootschap (CV) Samudra Alfath and Pamulang University collaborated to produce soy fiber for a pilot project and research and development. The research objective was to compare the efficiency of coal energy, gas fuel, and diesel in processing tofu dreg into soy fiber. The soy fiber production process began with heating a thermal oil heater (TOH) with coal for two hours to heat the oil to an output temperature of 190⁰ C to produce hot air, which was directed to a rotary dryer for the drying process of tofu dreg which has gone through the pressing process into the fiber, which was ground in a hammer mill to get 80 mesh. The results from 1 ton of tofu dregs per day produced 150 kilograms of soy fiber. The comparison of the use of fuel for processing 1 ton of tofu dregs, namely 150 kilograms of coal, 184.5 liters of diesel, and 148.9 kilograms of gas, with a coal production cost of IDR 728,700; IDR 2,573,676 of diesel fuel; IDR 2,754,587 of gas.