ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Optimization of Electrostatic Separation
Process for Maximizing Biowaste Recovery
Using Taguchi Method and ANOVA
Koonchun Lai1, Sooking Lim2, Pehchiong Teh1
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1Faculty of Engineering and Green Technology, University Tunku Abdul Rahman, Perak, Malaysia
2LKC Faculty of Engineering and Science, University Tunku Abdul Rahman, KL, Malaysia
Submission date: 2014-07-04
Final revision date: 2014-09-08
Acceptance date: 2014-09-23
Publication date: 2015-05-20
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2015;24(3):1125-1131
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ABSTRACT
In this study, the electrostatic separation process was employed to recover biowaste from waste mixtures.
The recovered biowaste is a potential source of alternative renewable energy (e.g. biomass energy).
Taguchi’s methodology of experimental design was used for a robust design of both system and random factors.
Robust design attempts to analyze the influence of respective factors towards the separation process and,
meanwhile, limits the negative impact of the hard-to-control random factors. The effects of four factors, namely
voltage level, rotation speed, water content, and particle size diameter were determined. It was noticeable
that voltage level has a maximum effect (39.44%) on effective recovery of biowaste, followed by size diameter,
water content, and rotation speed within design range. On the other hand, the minimal middling product
was mostly influenced by the voltage level (79.78%). The water content has a negligible effect (0.78 %) if
compared to rotation speed and size diameter. This paper concluded the appropriate operational range to have
less error from the variations of noise.