IPB Students Create Fish Packaging Box from Fishery Waste
Fish is a perishable commodity since it has a high water content. The decrease of quality of the fish can be seen physically, shown by the meat texture that is not chewy, the blackish brown gill, the unclear eyes, the increase of slime, and the strong odor.
The biggest factor of fish quality degradation is temperature. A higher temperature will result in a faster quality degradation of the fish.
As an effort to maintain the quality of the fish and to satisfy the consumers, three undergraduate students of Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) created an innovation of packaging box to pack fresh fishes.
The team consisted of Yeyen Laorenza, Bella Febriana, and Indomora, was supervised by Bambang Riyanto, S.Pi, M.Si. They created a box for packaging fresh fishes, called Thermal Insulator Packaging Box. The packaging was a box that had a thermal insulator (temperature retainer) from changing phase material from fish oil that was mixed with active nanocarbon.
"The creation of this changing phase utilized the fish oil waste from sardine canning in Pekalongan. Whereas active carbon that was being used was made from bone waste from catfish fillet industry in Purwakarta. The changing phase was added to the plastic material to be formed into boxes," said Yeyen.
The changing phase material that served as a thermal insulator functioned to prevent any air exchange from the environment to the packaging, so the inside temperature of the packaging can be maintained as low as possible. Low and constant temperature would protect the quality of the fish. The packaging would absorb the heat from the environment and keep it inside the phase changing material so the heat would not enter the packaging.
Through this idea, the team successfully broke into the Student Creativity Program in Research (PKM-P) that was held by the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of Indonesia. The title of their research was "Fish Freshness Transportation Box Packaging Insulator with Design of Fluctuate Temperature Stabilizers Based on Microcapsules Changing Phase Material from Fish Industry Waste." (CN)
