Effect of Green Tea Biomass Size to the Water Content and Density of Biopellets

Abstract

The four-month internship activities were carried out at Pusat Penelitian Teh dan Kina, located in Gambung, Bandung Regency, West Java, and focused on tea processing. In this internship activity, the authors focus on the product engineer division, where the authors pick, process, and innovate special teas (oolong, black, and green tea). The author has also conducted industrial-scale green tea processing and community services investigated the efficiency and heat loss at the ECP machine and collaborated with UGM University to research wood pellets. The primary research at PPTK tested the value of water content (SNI 01-2891-1992) and density (SNI 8021:2014) in biopellets derived from green tea processing by-products with different particle sizes (retained in mesh numbers 10, 14, and 18 and passed in mesh number 18) and analyzed them with SPSS (One way ANOVA). The values for water content and density obtained are inversely proportional to the size of the particles, where the highest values are found in the by-products that pass through mesh no. 18 (8.81% and 1.295 gr/cm3), and the lowest value is found in the by-product that is retained in mesh no. 10 (7.61% and 1.217 gr/cm3). Internships are one of the most important learning media, as the author discovered by comparing the material received with the world of work in the field, with results that are not always consistent. In the future, it is hoped that there will be good communication between the campus and the institution,