Invasive plants fuel opportunity in Indonesia

Primanita Nur Maulidah Setianingsih and her international Global Sustainability Challenge team are tackling two problems at once with their effort to turn an invasive plant into renewable biogas.

The team, called “BioGangs,” set out to address a shortage of liquid petroleum gas, which many Indonesian households rely on for cooking. Recent controversial policies have made the cooking fuel periodically expensive and rare, Setianingsih said, especially in rural communities.

To find a new pathway to cooking fuel, the team turned to the East Javan rivers near Setianingsih’s childhood home, where a plant called water hyacinth chokes the waterways, causing environmental and economic problems.

“With this project, we want people to see water hyacinth as an opportunity, a valuable thing that can solve their problems,” Setianingsih said.

Setianingsih and three of her five teammates are biology majors at Airlangga University in Indonesia. In Setianingsih’s hometown, people typically fuel their cookstoves with cylinders of liquified petroleum gas, which can be hard to access. Their backup fuel source is gas from a pipeline – but the pipeline is available only in the center of the city, she explained.

Some residents have switched to using firewood for cooking, but Setianingsih’s team wanted to provide an alternative, clean option.

“As we know, firewood is very dangerous to human health and can contribute to gas emissions and climate change,” she said.

To incorporate the technological aspects of their vision, the Airlangga University students connected with engineering students at two universities in India through the Global Sustainability Challenge platform online to form Team BioGangs and design the Hyacintelligent Project: a water hyacinth biodigester to create biogas to replace liquefied petroleum gas and firewood.

The biodigester system they’ve designed would be strategically located near a river, where local residents can easily collect water hyacinth. The plant is an ideal biogas ingredient because it grows rapidly, isn’t used for food, and contains high levels of cellulose and hemicellulose. Managing the system at the local level would also boost resilience in rural communities, in addition to providing affordable energy.

The Global Sustainability Challenge is Setianingsih’s first time working with students from another country, and she has appreciated learning from her teammates’ knowledge in both engineering and competition presentation. The experience has also bolstered her own storytelling and speaking skills.

“I’ve become more brave, more courageous,” she said.