Oxygen enriched air using membrane for palm oil wastewater treatment
Ramlah Mohd Tajuddin, Ahmad Fauzi Ismail and Mohd Razman Salim
pp. 989 - 998
Abstract
A research aimed to explore new method of aeration using oxygen enriched air performance on BOD reduction of palm oil wastewater was conducted. The oxygen enriched air was obtained from an Oxygen Enriched System (OES) developed using asymmetric polysulfone hollow fiber membrane with composition consisting of PSF: 22%, DMAc: 31.8%, THF: 31.8%, EtOH: 14.4%. Palm oil wastewater samples were taken from facultative pond effluent. These samples were tested for its initial biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), total suspended solids (TSS), pH, conductivity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen (DO), suspended solids (SS), and total dissolved solids (TDS) before being subjected to two modes of aeration system, that is diffused air and oxygen enriched air. These water quality concentrations were tested for every 20 minutes for two-hour period during the aeration process. Results of BOD, TSS, pH, conductivity, DO, SS and TDS concentrations against time of samples from the two modes of aeration were then compared. It was found that DO concentration achieved in oxygen enriched air aeration was better than aeration using diffused air system. Aeration using OES improve the DO concentration in the wastewater and thus improve the BOD reduction and also influence other physical characteristics of wastewater. This phenomenon indicates the advantage of using air with higher oxygen concentration for wastewater aeration instead of diffused air system.
