Experience from East Belitung
PT Steelindo Wahana Perkasa is a company engaged in the processing of oil palm fruit which is located in Kelapa Kampit District, East Belitung Regency. The MBKM industrial internship group at PT Steelindo Wahana Perkasa consisted of four students from the Department of Bioenergy Engineering and Chemurgy at the Institut Teknologi Bandung, namely Jiyad Fauzan (14518005), Sabila Rahmania (14518017), Sabrina (14518018), and Jovanka Rana (14518026).
Practical work at PT SWP takes place offline starting with the departure for East Belitung by plane on June 13, 2021. Adhering to health protocols during this pandemic, self-quarantine and antigen tests are carried out first before starting all industrial internship activities. After ensuring security and safety, practical work participants were invited to tour the PT SWP factory complex which consists of a palm oil mill, kernel crushing plant (KCP), refinery, fractionation, and biogas plant as well as visiting the port or jetty for PT SWP’s export-import purposes.
During the ongoing practical work, the participants were guided by a process assistant who explained and presented the overall refinery and fractionation process, and took them around the refinery and fractionation plant while introducing the tools used in the process. PT SWP’s refinery plant uses raw materials in the form of CPO from PT SWP’s own palm oil mill. The resulting product is RBDPO, some of which will be fractionated into olein and stearin at the fractionation plant and partly will be sold. The refinery process in PT SWP is divided into 3 parts, namely pre-treatment and bleaching, filtration, and deodorization, while the fractionation process consists of 2 parts, namely crystallization and filtration. The refinery factory building is easily recognizable because of the 9-story distillation tank that the practical work participants have reached with the stairs. The fractionation plant itself is adjacent to the refinery plant.
In studying the processes that occur at the PT SWP factory, the practical work participants were divided into two groups where Jovanka and Sabila focused on the fractionation plant, while Sabrina and Jiyad on the refinery plant. Based on the predetermined group division, the search for data starts from the control room to learn about process flow diagrams, process control, and P&ID of refinery plants and fractionation plants in each section. Supervisory staff who are at work also provide insight into the details of the process and tool performance. In addition, practical work participants also had the opportunity to visit the PT SWP laboratory located at the refinery office to obtain data on the main raw materials, supporting raw materials, products, and PT SWP waste as well as sounding on the oil storage tank to check the tank capacity with the staff. laboratory. Meanwhile, information regarding waste treatment and water supply at the mill was obtained from the palm oil mill office.
