Treatment of palm oil mill effluent (POME) by map precipitation / Nurul Liyana Kamarudzaman

Faculty of Civil Engineering and Earth Resources

Project paper (Bachelor of Engineering (Civil Engineering)) -- Universiti Malaysia Pahang – 2013

Bibliography : p. 38-44

The palm oil industry is one of the leading industries in Malaysia with a yearly production of more than 13 million tons of crude palm oil. However, the production of such amounts of crude palm oil result in even larger amounts of palm oil mill effluent (POME), estimated at nearly three times the quantity of crude palm oil. In this study, raw POME from KKS Jabor was treated using MAP precipitation and polished using zeolite adsorption method. MAP precipitation was used to treat and extract nutrients in the form of fertilizers, whereas, zeolite adsorption was employed to further treat the POME. Several water quality parameters were considered to determine the effectiveness of both treatment methods. Initially, for the MAP precipitation, different molar ratios of 0.5:1:1, 0.8:1:1, 1:1:0.5, 1:1:0.8, 1:1:1, 1.2:1:1 and 1.5:1:1 were prepared at pH 9 and the efficiency in contaminants removal were determined using jar tests. Further reductions in the concentrations of contaminants were obtained after treatment using zeolite adsorption methods. The total reduction in COD, BOD, turbidity, color, and ammonium nirogen were 57.45%, 55.53%, 21.00%, 78.32% and 85.48%, respectively. However, the results indicated that further treatments are required to reduce the levels of contaminants to conform to allowable discharge standards. This research clearly confirmed the MAP precipitation may be used to produce valuable slow releasing fertilizer for agricultural use. The mass and characteristics of the MAP precipitates were determined. However, high moisture contained within the precipitates might hinder the commercialization of these valuable fertilizers