Polishing treatment of palm oil mill effluent phytoremediation by Scirpus grossus

Abstract

This paper evaluates the performance of Scirpus grossus plant in polishing treatment of palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment. The experiments were run in batch for planted and unplanted systems serve as control treatment. The experiments were run in triplicate to study the performance of Scirpus grossus in organics removal via chemical oxygen demand (COD), suspended solid (SS) and nutrients removal efficiencies. The POME samples were measured every 3 days for 18 days of treatment duration. The growth of Scirpus grossus was observed in term of number of plants, plants height, and the plants weight. From the result, Scirpus grossus plant was capable to enhance the pollutant removal efficiencies with 91% of SS, 88% of COD, 96% of ammonia, 99% total nitrogen and 56% of total phosphorus. While for control systems the removal achieved 52% of SS, 83% of COD, 93% of ammonia, 92% total nitrogen and 45% of total phosphorus. Therefore, Scirpus grossus plants have the great potential in nutrients removal and suitable as phytoremediation plant in POME treatment.