Development And Utilization Of Aerobic Granular Biomass In Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) Treatment
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Date
2011-07
Authors
Kanadasan, Gobi
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
Palm oil mill effluent (POME) discharged without proper treatment could cause severe environmental problem in Malaysia. The conventional biological treatment method using activated sludge in series of ponds is considered obsolete. Hence, in this work, aerobic granular biomass was developed and utilized for the treatment of POME in the sequencing batch reactor (SBR). The mean diameter of the developed aerobic granule was 0.9 mm. The developed aerobic granule managed to remove about 88% of the influent COD at average, throughout the operation of SBR. The sludge volume index (SVI) of the biomass reduced from 80 to 30 ml/g. Meanwhile, the mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS) of the SBR decreased from 3600 mg/l to 2500 mg/l prior to the granulation process and the MLSS concentration increased to 3800 mg/l after the aerobic granule formed. In the physical treatment, preliminary studies were done by using waste activated sludge (WAS) from SBR to adsorb Methylene Blue (MB) in batch and continuous flow column. Results showed that the uptake of MB increased with an increase in both the initial MB concentration and pH, and decreased with an increase in temperature. WAS was found to have adsorption capacity of 66.23 mg/g, 84% MB removal, obeys both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm and fits pseudo-second-order kinetics. Thermodynamic analysis showed that the MB adsorption process onto WAS is an exothermic and spontaneous process. Meanwhile in the continuous flow column adsorption, slower flow rate, larger bed height and higher inlet dye concentration increases the adsorption. The adsorption capacity and removal efficiency was 20.16 mg/g and 82.3%, respectively. Data fitted well to Thomas model and Yoon-Nelson model. In the last part of this study, the effluent from the SBR (biologically treated POME) was further polished using continuous flow column packed with WAS. The optimum value for the COD and turbidity removal (20.68% and 96.42%, respectively) achieved at bed height of 3.28 cm and flow rate of 2.13 ml/min. The results showed that the developed aerobic granule can biologically treat POME in SBR and WAS can be potentially used as the adsorbent in the physical treatment of SBR effluent with commendable efficiency.
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Keywords
Development and utilization of aerobic granular biomass , in palm oil mill effluent (pome) treatment