Original Article | 2001, Vol.23 Supplementary : Oil Palm, pp.779-787
High-rate anaerobic treatment of palm oil mill effluent
Monticha Pechsuth, Poonsuk Prasertsan and Masao Ukita
pp. 779 - 787
Abstract
Palm oil mil effluent (POME) contains high amount of organic matter, oil & grease, total solids and suspended solids. Anaerobic treatment of POME was conducted at room temperature (30±2ºC) and high temperature (50±0.5ºC). The effects of hydraulic retention time (HRT), organic loading rate (OLR), COD:N ratio and temperature on the anaerobic digestion of POME were investigated. The optimum conditions were found to be 10 days HRT, OLR of 9.50 kg COD m-3d-1, COD:N ratio of 65 and the optimum temperature at 50ºC. The highest COD reduction of 81.1% was achieved. Biogas production in general was greater than 0.30 m3 /kg COD/d. Comparison on anaerobic treatment using POME and POME treated by thermotolerant polymer-producing fungi Rhizopus sp. ST4 revealed that the biopretreated POME gave higher COD removal (72.6%) but lower biogas production (0.97 m3 /m3 /d or 0.27 m3 /kg COD/d) than the POME without pretreatment (56.1% and 1.16 m3 /m3 /d or 0.37 m3 /kg COD/d, respectively).
