Palm Oil Mill Effluent Treatment by Using Copperas as Physicochemical Treatment Agent

Abstract

The palm oil mill industry in Malaysia are a huge agriculture industry which generates significant amount Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME). POME is an oily wastewater which consist of various suspended components, the liquid are a combination of steriliser condensate and cooling water. The wastewater is very pollutant to human and environment, the coagulants applied to reduce the suspended materials in POME as following the stringent requirements of biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total dissolved solid (TDS), total solid (TS) and turbidity as stated by the Department of environment. This paper analyses the use of ferrous sulphate heptahydrate as a coagulant as it was applied on the primary treatment and the results improvement upon physicochemical treatment parameters. Series of batch treatment for coagulation and flocculation with ferrous sulphate heptahydrate were conducted. Dosage and pH were conducted to determine the optimum conditions to apply the coagulants. The result of coagulants showed that ferrous sulphate heptahydrate have a good effect on BOD reduction at dosage 1500 mg/l pH of 3.4 before pH adjustment. There were eight different samples used for different concentration of coagulant, the sample of 250 ppm copperas feed till 1000 ppm feed has the COD result difference of 171 ppm. When the copperas feed increased the COD value will decreased gradually. For the second parameter, biological oxygen demands the BOD value are reduced successfully, the first sample with feed concentration 500 ppm of copperas has BOD value of 288 ppm. As we increase the feed of copperas to 2000 ppm the BOD value reduced to 13 ppm. Next the highest value of TSS reduction is at 2000 ppm of copperas feed, at the specific dosage the TSS reading was 7502 ppm