Students Discover Freon's Substitute from Waste

Students of Faculty of Engineering Universitas Brawijaya (FTUB) Malang managed to find a replacement of freon from waste. The study was conducted because of the related removal of freon in 2030 later. Freon should be eliminated in 2030 because of global warming due to the rapidly increasing freon use of air conditioning.

"Well, that's why we wanted to create a freon-free air conditioning in order to reduce global warming with our tools," said the coordinator of the research team, Lovely Sakina to Republika.co.id, Thursday (24/8).

They use fly ash as a freon replacement. Fly ash is a waste generated from the operation of Steam Power Plant (PLTU). As is known, so far the need for electricity increases every year. PLTU still uses coal as a known source of processing by using the combustion process. The combustion process produces side wastes such as fly ash which can cause problems for the environment and health.

Fly ash apparently has a silica content with a fairly large percentage. According to him, these findings have the potential to be developed into high-value products. The huge potential of this also sparked the team SIROGEL of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Brawijaya (FT-UB) to conduct research with the title "Use of Polyethylene Glycol as a template in the synthesis of silica airgel from Abu Fly (Fly Ash) Coal for Applications Solid sorption Refrigeration ".

Beautiful along with four other members examined the silica content on fly ash waste. Under the guidance of Lecturer Bambang Poerwadi, he and his team started to process silica on waste into aerogel silica.

For information, silica aerogel is a unique material and has many uses. Silica aerogel has the ability to absorb very large water. Silica aerogel can serve as solid sorption refrigeration in cooling system such as coolbox and air conditioner (AC).

According to him, solid sorption refrigeration is a solution for environmentally friendly cooling system. In principle, he continued, to absorb heat air by the pores of aerogel silica. "And silica airgel which has absorbed the hot air can be cooled by flowing cold water into the pores of silica airgel silica airgel that can be cold and hot air will absorption in the system can continue to do," he said.

These findings also have other potential beneficial for society as reduce environmental pollution caused by waste fly ash (fly ash) as well as pollution caused by refrigerant in a cooling system. "In the future, we will create a new air conditioner system that uses our sirogel with water as cooling agent so it really replaces the use of freon in AC at present," said Indah explained.