Around 750 families employed in the tofu cottage industry in North Cilacap district, Cilacap regency, Central Java, are proudly  processing their foul-smelling food waste into methane, or biogas, and using the results as an alternative cooking fuel.

Students and members of local NGOs worked out the process of turning the soybean dregs left over in the tofu-making process into biogas through a trial and error development strategy over the past year.

“We are very grateful that we could finally settle the food waste problem, which was often a cause for complaint from neighbors because of the stench,” the head of  the Cilacap Students’ Environmental Awareness Foundation, Herman Sukamto, who developed the food-waste processor, told The Jakarta Post recently.

“Now the waste is collected in a concealed and closed tank called a digester instead of in an open pond.  

“The waste ferments unnoticed inside the tank and produces methane. We can then use this biogas for cooking.”

He said 75 home-based tofu factories were located in Gumilir and Mertasinga villages in North Cilacap, each employing at least 10 families.

“This means a lot to all of us. Besides overcoming the stench, we have come up with an alternative energy so we don’t have to rely just on costly kerosene, butane or firewood any more,” Sukamto said.

He said tofu-making byproducts used to be channeled to an open pond near the tofu maker’s house, creating a rank oder that wafted through the whole neighborhood.

The biogas process now begins in the kitchen where the soybean skins and liquid waste are channeled directly into a concealed well 3 meters below ground.

“The waste passes through two tanks in each processing unit. The first tank deep in the ground cools the organic material,” Sukamto said.

“In the second tank the anaerobic fermentation begins.”

“Biogas can be extracted after five cubic meters of tofu dregs  ferment for two months. After that, a single digester can produce biogas around the clock which can be stored in regular gas canisters and then used as fuel.”

The current stumbling block, Sukamto said, was funding, as each unit costs Rp 7 million (US$622) to build.

“We expect to need about 70 of these units for the whole community of factories, and we are short of funding,” he said.

So far the Cilacap Processing Unit of state-run oil and gas company Pertamina had helped by providing funds to set up seven of the waste-processing units.

“We are very grateful to Pertamina, they’ve shown real concern,” said Sukamto.

Pertamina’s Cilacap spokesperson Kurdi told the media attending a handover ceremony recently that his office was proud of the innovation which was environmentally friendly and at the same time produced an alternative fuel.

“We were inspired to help the tofu cottage industries in Cilacap because this is a major innovation,” Kurdi told reporters.

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