Perpustakaan Digital ITB

As a country that has a fairly extensive coastline, Indonesia has great potential as a salt producer in the International market. However, in Indonesia salt are currently produced by home industries in small scale and hence cannot be expected to meet the high quality standard of food or pharmaceutical grade salt. This research is conducted to establish an appropriate method for the production of pharmaceutical grade NaCl candidate at laboratory scale. The process of the purification of local crude salt includes filtration, addition of adsorbent and precipitating agent, pH adjustment, addition of chelating agent and recrystallization. The adsorbent and the precipitating agent used were active carbon and sodium carbonate, while sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid were used to adjust pH. The purified salt then undergoes several tests for the specifications according to the procedures describe in the Indonesian Pharmacopoeia 5th edition. The result shows that the sample has fulfilled all the requirement except for limits of arsenic and volatile organic compound (not determined). However in the case of volatile organic compound, data from the previous study using similar purification method is available, in which the level of this impurities is not greater than permissible level. For arsenic, considering that other metal impurities have been effectively removed, it is assumed that arsenic can also be removed applying this procedure. Based on overall results, it was concluded that the appropriate method for the production of pharmaceutical grade NaCl candidate at laboratory scale was successfully obtained.