Zero Discharge Performance of an Industrial Pilot-Scale Plant Treating Palm Oil Mill Effluent

Abstract

Palm oil is one of the most important agroindustries in Malaysia. Huge quantities of palm oil mill effluent (POME) pose a great threat to aqueous environment due to its very high COD. To make full use of discharged wastes, the integrated “zero discharge” pilot-scale industrial plant comprising “pretreatment-anaerobic and aerobic process-membrane separation” was continuously operated for 1 year. After pretreatment in the oil separator tank, 55.6% of waste oil in raw POME could be recovered and sold and anaerobically digested through 2 AnaEG reactors followed by a dissolved air flotation (DAF); average COD reduced to about 3587 mg/L, and biogas production was 27.65 times POME injection which was used to generate electricity. The aerobic effluent was settled for 3 h or/and treated in MBR which could remove BOD3 (30°C) to less than 20 mg/L as required by Department of Environment of Malaysia. After filtration by UF and RO membrane, all organic compounds and most of the salts were removed; RO permeate could be reused as the boiler feed water. RO concentrate combined with anaerobic surplus sludge could be used as biofertilizer.

Recovery of High Value‐Added Nutrients from Fruit and Vegetable Industrial Wastewater

“…There are an increasing number of studies focusing on the nutrient recovery and water reuse, and the concept of zero discharge has recently been proposed in many areas of industrial productions; food industry is no exception (Lee & Okos, ; Tabassum, Zhang, & Zhang, ; Tong & Elimelech, ; Wang et al., ). However, no further indication was shown about nutrient recovery and application in most of studies, and the substances recovered were usually treated in a low‐value way as fertilizer and feed or waste oil to be sold (Lee & Okos, ; Tabassum et al., ).…”

Treatment of Palm Oil Mill Effluent Using Membrane Bioreactor: Novel Processes and Their Major Drawbacks

“…Wang et al [20] reported that chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biological oxygen demand (BOD) level in POME ranged from 15,000 to 100,000 mg/L and 10,250-43,730 mg/L, respectively. Accordingly, the presence of such a high concentration of organic pollutant (POME) in waterways could make it inhabitable for the aquatic lives [36,37]. POME may be characterized as high strength or low strength wastewater, depending on the number and concentration of contaminants confined.…”

“…First, BI is the ratio of BOD to COD elements contained in a given POME sample [37,41]. It measures the strength and treatments strain requirements [42,43].…”

“…In an effort to improves the limitations of both aerobic and anaerobic processes, studies have shown that better performance could be achieved by hybridizing the two processes (anaerobic-aerobic) [13,28,37,146]. The combination of an anaerobic-aerobic treatment approach integrates the benefits of both processes and thus ensures adequate bio-decomposition, a higher rate of degradations, more biogas/bio-fertilizer recovery, efficient nitrification and denitrification processes [37,147,148]. Essentially, at acclimatized state, the anaerobic bacteria significantly reduced the pollutants such as COD, BOD and TSS [149], while the aerobic treatment is much suitable for the removal of toxic gases such as ammonia [8,150,151].…”

Bioenergy for a Cleaner Future: A Case Study of Sustainable Biogas Supply Chain in the Malaysian Energy Sector

“…Zero waste discharge treatment has been implemented in several countries around the world (i.e., Italy, United States, Canada, Malaysia, China and India). For instance, this technology has been used for reusing the wastewater produced by car manufacturing and secondary sewage [74], heavy oil recovery [75], wastewater reclamation and reuse in marine ports [76], the treatment of chromium-containing leather waste [77] and treating POME [78]. However, the environmental sustainability of this treatment process in terms of the LCA approach is still under development.…”