Microbiology Students Won Energy Research Competition at IYEC 2016

A group of student from Microbiology Undergraduate Program was succeeded to get the 3^rd place in IATMI Youth Energy Challenge (IYEC) on Energy Reseach Competition catego
ry. This achievement was made by Ratna Eka Putri (Microbiology 2012), Ruli Fatmawati (Microbiology 2012), and Benedictus Gutjahr (Microbiology 2012) (Figure 1). They named their team as ‘Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery (MEOR)’ Team.

IYEC is the annual event hold by Petroluem Engineering Association of Indonesia (IATMI) ITB Student Chapter. In this year, this event brought theme called “Getting to Know the World Oil and Gas Indonesia and Realizing Innovation Technology for the Advancement of Indonesian Petroleum Industry”. This event presented in several activities in a week consists of Health Fair, Grand Seminar, Technology Design Competition, Petrolympiad, Energy Research Competition, and Poster Competition.

Taken part on following Energy Research Competition, MEOR team was tried to collaborate science and engineering knowledge to create the opportunity of green technology implementation in oil exploitation. Based on the fact that our fossil energy getting limited but its demand are undoubtedly continued to increase, they offers the way to improve oil production using microbes and its metabolites. The research conducted in Bioprocess Laboratory of SITH ITB and giving a very impressive results. From their study, it has been known that the indigenous microbes isolated from oil field sample are capable to produce metabolite called biosurfactant which able to decrease the interfacial tension (IFT) between oil and water.  This IFT reduction is one of important mechanism in complex MEOR process that can help to release the trapped-oil inside the rocks.

Ratna, Ruli, and Beni said that they were not expected to get the winner position, “we just trying to give our best performance in final presentation session on that day though we got a little bit nervous”. Well, victory loves preparation and they have been able to prove it. Congratulations!

From the right: Ratna, Ruli, and Beni, are taking awards as a winner of IYEC competition. Congratulations!