Treatment of palm oil mill effluent (POME) using hybrid up flow anaerobic sludge blanket (HUASB) reactor
Malaysia currently accounts for 51% of world palm oil production and 62% of world exports. In 2004, it was reported that Malaysia produces 14 million tons of palm oil planted on 38 000 square kilometers of land. This generates an enormous amount of liquid effluent known as palm oil mill effluent (PO...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Published: |
2010
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/1648/ http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/1648/1/NUR_AZEERA_BADROLDIN.pdf |
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| Summary: | Malaysia currently accounts for 51% of world palm oil production and 62% of
world exports. In 2004, it was reported that Malaysia produces 14 million tons of
palm oil planted on 38 000 square kilometers of land. This generates an enormous
amount of liquid effluent known as palm oil mill effluent (POME) and consequently
creates significant amount of pollution when released into rivers and lakes without
proper treatment. Currently, the POME is treated using several methods such as
cascade anaerobic ponds, anaerobic sludge fixed-film bioreactor and confined
anaerobic digester. However, they have disadvantages of requiring vast land area,
long hydraulic retention time (HRT) and low treatment efficiency. Besides that, the
up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor has also been used to remove high
pollutant loads of effluent from industrial wastewater. However in this study, hybrid
upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (HUASB) reactors have been used to treat the
POME. The aims of this research are to verify the performance of HUASB reactor
and determine the optimum volumetric organic loading (OLR). Three reactors which
are fixed with filter media of coarse gravels (R1), fine gravels (R2) and crushed glass
(R3) were used to treat POME from Kian Hoe Plantation Sdn. Bhd. At the start of
reactors operation, the OLR was fixed at 1.83 gCOD/L.d and HRT of 2.73 d until they
reached steady state condition at 47 days for R1 and R2 and 42 days for R3. The
OLRs were then gradually increased up to the loading of 9.17 gCOD/L.d for R1,
12.84 gCOD/L.d for R2 and 11.92 gCOD/l.d for R3. Whereas the HRTs were
gradually decreased from 2.73 d to 0.55 d for R1, 0.39 d for R2 and 0.42 d for R3.
The maximum efficiency of reactors in removing COD yields up to 97% with the
loading of 5.5 gCOD/L.d for R1, 8.25 gCOD/L.d for R2 and 11.92 gCOD/L.d for R3.
The use of packing materials in the HUASB reactors can avoid the floatation of poor
settling particles and preventing washout of biomass from the reactors. This
contributed to the increase in efficiency of the reactors. |
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