Pandji Prawisudha
The growth of water hyacinth in the Cirata Reservoir region as part of the Citarum River covered almost the entire surface of the reservoir in 2015. The problems that arise not only damage the aesthetics of the water agency, but disturb the life of the water biota underneath and inhibit the transportation paths of fishermen around the reservoir. To overcome this problem, the ITB Campus in collaboration with Citarum Harum PM to find efficient solutions. The solution that can be done to overcome this problem is to process water hyacinth into a product that has maximum selling and utilization value. To process water hyacinth, research is carried out using a wet torefaction process. Wet or hydrothermal torefaction is a thermochemical process with water and biomass media that can increase the characteristic value of biomass. Initial research was conducted using a laboratory wet torefaction tool with variation parameters, namely temperature (120 ° C, 140 ° C, 160 ° C and 180 ° C). From this test there will be two products from the wet torefaction process, solid products and liquid products. Liquid products will test the content of nitrogen, phosphos and potassium (NPK) as macro nutritional content needed by plants in liquid fertilizer. Obtained from the operating temperature of 140 ° C NPK content owned by this liquid product meets the Indonesian National Standard for liquid organic fertilizer. The product of the wet torefaction solids is dried to remove the water content in the wet solid product. After getting a dry solid, the simple use is as a planting medium for plants.