| Summary: | MES (Methyl Ester Sulfonate) plant with production capacity of 100.000 ton/year will be
built in Gresik, East Java. With total area of 4,5 ha and 221 employees, it aims to fill the increasing
demand of surfactant, the active component of cleaning products (detergent). Its product, MES
surfactant, offers several advantages, such as bio-degradable (hospitable to environment), cheaper
and the abundance of its raw materials in Indonesia.
Production process of MES can be categorized into 2 parts, which is ester-transesterification
process and sulfonation process. Ester-transesterification process is carried out in 2 Reactive
Distillation columns (RD-01 and RD-02). RD-01 is used for reacting Crude Palm Oil (CPO) and
methanol, with H2SO4 catalyst, to reduce 90% of Free Fatty Acid (FFA) content in CPO.
Meanwhile, the RD-02 is used for reacting CPO (triglyseride) and methanol, with NaOH catalyst,
to produce glycerol and Methyl Ester (ME). Sulfonation process is then carried out in Sulfonation
Reactor and ME produced from RD-02 is reacted with SO3 gas to form MES. Resulted MES is
dried up using Rotary Dryer later in order to get MES powder as final product.
According to the process description above, raw materials that are used to produce 100,000
ton/year MES (with MES content of 93.2%) are 9,684.58 ton/year of 99.5% methanol solution,
75,510.94 ton/year of CPO and 46,602.47 ton/year of SO3 gas as main reactants, with 800.08
ton/year of H2SO4 solution 98% and 12,280.36 ton/year of 50% NaOH solution as supported
catalysts. Several side products that are formed along with the process are 7,843.02 ton/year of
glycerol, 1,158,62 ton/year of NaSO4 and 156,26 ton/year of 50% methanol solution which can be
sold for commercial purpose. Total energy consumption for plant operation is 426.8875 kW of
electricity and 26.1459 MMSCFD of natural gas. 6,965.5507 kg/hour of water is taken from Java
Sea and served as utility water.
Capital required to build this MES plant is $ 31,978,011.08 + Rp. 94,606,606,772.2 as Fixed
Capital and $ 41,798,536.75 + Rp. 2,736,382,538.05 as Working Capital. Production cost of the
plant is $ 175,292,517.17 Rp. 29,129,233,469.53. According to the economical calculation, this
plant is categorized as high risk factory with RoI of 57.47%, PoT of 1.27 year, BEP of 43.17%,
SDP of 30.32% and DCFRR of 28.35%. Based on the result, it can be concluded that this MES
plant is profitable and worthy for further investigation.
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