Phytoremediation Of Palm Oil Mill Effluent (Pome) Using P. Stratiotes

• Main Author: Ong, Yong Ching
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2013
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/36519/1/Ong%20Yong%2824pgs%29.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/36519/4/Ong%20Yong%20Ching.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/36519/

Palm oil industry is one of the largest industry in Malaysia. The waste produced from palm oil industry especially the palm oil mill effluent (POME) has become the major concern for public. Department of Environment (DOE), Malaysia has limited the BOD level of POME discharge to 20 mg/L. Therefore, POME treatment is a very important process in palm oil industry. Current technologies for the treatment of POME used in the industry are either not cost effective or unable to reduce BOD level to meet the requirement. This research aims to study the feasiblity of using phytoremediation treatment on POME using P.Stratiotes as the macrophytes. Experiments were conducted to study the effects of pH, retention time and plant to POME ratio on the characteristics of POME including BOD, COD and TSS. From the results, it was found that phytoremediation treatment by using P.Stratiotes was able to reduce BOD of POME to 85 % at the condition of pH 7 and plant to POME ratio of 0.0500 kg/L. The lowest BOD achieved in this research was 5.90 mg/L which had met the DOE requirement. The highest reduction of COD was 22.1 % at pH 4 whereas TSS was reduced to 80 % at pH 6 with plant to POME ratio of 0.0250 kg/L. The results showed that phytoremediation treatment was effective in the removal of contaminants from POME.