Resumen
Palm oil mill effluent or POME is the waste water discharge from palm oil milling activities. Polyhydroxyalkanoate or PHA is linear polyester that produces by bacterial fermentation of sugar or lipids with nature process. PHA is a biodegradable plastic that coming from nonfossil fuel sources. A methodology was developed for PHA extraction from palm oil mill effluent using chemical solvent. The solvent that been used in this research is nonhalogenated solvent which is Acetone, Methyl isobutyl ketone and Ethyl acetate. PHA extraction involves three steps important process. These are pome pre-treatment, solvent extraction and purification. For treatment, the dry sample was washed with 20ml methanol for 5 hours. For solvent extraction, the sample after treatment was rinse with 1ml of solvent then 10ml of methanol was added with vigorous stirring for 24 hours for its recovery. Purification of PHA can be done after recovery with added 1ml of solvent and precipitated in 50ml of methanol. For the result, the percentage of mass PHA recovery with acetone has high percentage that is 93% followed by ethyl acetate with 81.2% and lastly with methyl isobutyl ketone with 66%. PHA purity showed percentage by using acetone is 71%. Followed by ethyl acetate 58% and lastly methyl isobutyl ketone with 49%. The research aim is to extract PHA from POME using chemical solvent, study the percentage of purity and recovery of PHA.