Post-treatment of palm oil mill effluent using zeolite and wastewater

Abstract

The palm oil mill effluent (POME) is one of the most important ecosystems hazard and can become a crucial environmental burden if discharged without any treatment to nature. The present study aimed to develop a fast method for post-treatment of POME. To enhance treatment process, the domestic wastewater (DWW) and zeolite were added to the sequencing batch reactor (SBR) as the available microbial source and new adsorbent, respectively. The results indicate that the chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), total suspended solids (TSS), ammonia nitrogen (AN) and colour removal rates were in the range of 95.34%-98.31%, 88.79%-91.44%, 95.47%-98.95%, 96.19%-98.30% and 56.94%-81.64%, respectively. Moreover, SBR with both DWW and zeolite addition was able to remove high percentage of all pollution compared to only DWW addition (with a removal percentage of 77% TSS, 74% COD, 76% colour and 90% AN) or zeolite (23% TSS, 10% COD, 9.6% colour and 80% AN). The response surface methodology (RSM) was used to elucidate response surface and optimise the independent variables. The highest desirability of POME treatment (0.988) was achieved in optimum operation conditions. Under these conditions, COD, BOD, colour, AN and TSS removal rates were 96.80%, 90.1%, 69.90%, 98.20% and 97.20%, respectively.