Smart sensor based distillation for fractionating citronella oil: current research challenges

Citronella oil is one of the essential oils derived from the leaves and stem of lemongrass (Cymbopogon nardus). At present, most of the lemongrass oil industry in Indonesia is still in the form of upstream industries which only provide crude purified oils with low purity for export with a fairly low sales value. Technology in improving the purity of citronella oil needs innovation in following the development of the industrial revolution 4.0. This article presents an overview of the research opportunities in the development of distillation for fractionating citronella oil referring to automation of optimization processes in the vacuum fractional distillation accompanied by inspection of the quality of essential oil isolation run in the line process based on smart sensors integrated in a computer program. The combination technique of quality control of essential oils in line process system combined with the optimization technique of the vacuum fractional distillation process has not been studied by advanced researchers. Therefore, this study has a state of the art process engineering and smart sensor-based quality control systems that can be developed for strengthening the Indonesian citronella oil industry.