POME treatment efficacy as affected by carrier material size in micro-bioreactor system

Abstract

This paper presents the effect of different sizes of palm kernel shell (PKS) activated carbon as the carrier material in a micro-bioreactor system to treat the palm oil mill effluent (POME). Three different sizes of PKS activated carbon were used as the carrier material, i.e. 4.750 – 2.360 mm (large), 1.180 – 0.710 mm (average) and 0.425 – 0.300 mm (small). The systems were run for a total of 29 days under hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 24 hours. The performances of several effluent quality parameters of POME regarding the use of PKS activated carbon of different sizes were studied. PKS activated carbon with size 1.180 – 0.710 mm showed the highest removal performances for chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammoniacal-nitrogen (AN), and solids, with 41 %, 84.6 %, and 88 % of removal respectively. The system with PKS activated carbon of size 4.750 - 2.360 mm showed the highest performance in removing TP (45 %), while 1.180 – 0.710 mm size of PKS activated carbon showed the highest performance in removing TN (53 %). The system was also found to effectively reduce the effluent colour. In overall, the PKS activated carbon of size 1.180 – 0.710 mm showed the best results as a carrier material to be used in the micro-bioreactor system in treating POME compared to the other two sizes.