Plasma Technology Research and Its Applications: developing in the Faculty of Science and Methematics Diponegoro University

Muhammad Nur
Plasma Devision, Nuclear and Atomics Laboratories, Physics Department, Faculty of Science and Mathematics, Diponegoro University, Semarang Indonesia, 50275

Absract
Research on the application of plasma technology in the areas of environment, health, food, agriculture have been conducted in the Laboratory of Atomic and Nuclear Physics Division of Plasma Technology in the Faculty of Science and Mathematics, University of Diponegoro. This paper reported research results on plasma technology and its applications in these fields that have been curried out in recent years. Plasma for environmental applications can reduce gas emissions released by motor vehicle exhaust has produced plasma tech. This technology can reduce emissions of SOx, COx, and NOx are significant . In the health sector the ability to plasma technology to kill bacteria is also reported in this paper. In agriculture we use plasma technology to enrich the nitrogen in the compost, and accelerate growth for plant of corn, mustard and mangroves. Acceleration of the growth of mangroves, we found that mangroves can be reduced early growth to have two leaves that usually takes 60 days to 28 days or save time approximately equal to 100%. More resent of our research on ozone production by using silent plasma or Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma (DBDP) and implemented for microbial inactivation in rice has been done. The plasma reactor for ozone generating were reactor with multi-point-plane (MP-P) reactor and spiral-cylender (S-C) reactor configurations. The high voltage AC has been used with voltage up to 40 kV and maximum frequency 23 kHz. For implementation in rice, this research used a Randomized Block Design (RBD) with 5 treatments and 4 replications in each treatment. Exposure time was varied such as: 0, 30, 60, 90, and 120 minutes. Total bacteria and molds (fungi) has been detected by using Total Plate Count (TPC) methods with nutrient broth as media for bacteria and, we found that MP-P Reactor needed less voltage comparing with S-C Reactor for the same cocentration ozone. Ozone generated by DBDP can reduce the population of bacteria and fungi in rice. The exposure for 90 minutes can eliminate 58.41% population of bacteria, and 26.23% population of fungi.