| dc.description.abstract | Patchcoully oil is produced from distillation process of pogostemon leaf. To
facilitate the oil comes out, the pogostemon leaf (including its stalks) should be
cut into small pieces after harvesting. Nowadays, cutting process is done manually
by using manpower (worker) with a big knife as a tool. Energy required for this
manual process was very high, so the worker tends to get tired easily after work
for some times. Besides, the time needed for finishing the cutting process is high.
With high requirement of both energy and time, the cost of production becomes
increase and then will cause inefficiency and ineffective in the production. Based
on these reasons, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of distillation process of
pogostemon leaf by alternating the design of cutter machine which aimed to
minimize the constraints emerged at manual cutting process. Plan design includes
the functional (making of cutter knives, pad and transmission system from
electromotor) and structural (making of frame which support the functional
design) design. Performance test was done by treating the rotation speed per
minute of knives rotation with 500 (A1) and 600 (A2) RPM and varying the
distance of knives with 100 (B1) and 150 (B2) mm. Parameters measured in the
performance test were work capacities (kg/hour), efficiency (percent),
improvement (percent) and utilization cost analysis of machine (rupiah). The
functional test resulted that the machine could work well as the design planned. In
the elementary test, the highest work capacity was reached at 171.75 kg/hour
(combination of A2B2). Besides, the highest efficiency of machine was reached at
93.75 percent (combination of A1B2). This highest machine performance
experienced the improvement of 81.1 percent and 27.2 percent when compared to
one and four workers (A2B2), respectively with manual cutting process. The
expense required for utilization of this new design machine was only about Rp.
20.325.- for once cutting process with 12-15 percent water content of more than a
ton pogostemon refine process. | en_US |
