Synthesis of magnetic cellulose as flocculant for PreTreatment of anaerobically treated palm oil mill effluent

Abstract

Recently, more attentions have been paid to natural polymer-based flocculants in wastewater treatment, since they are believed to be low-cost, nontoxic, and environmentally friendly materials. In present work, a hybrid flocculant namely magnetic cellulose (Magcell) was successfully synthesised through simple crosslinking method. As preliminary study, effect of ratio between magnetite powder and cellulose and also volume of glutaraldehyde as crosslinking agent were selected in this research. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of flocculant was determined by performing a jar test to treat an anaerobically treated palm oil mill effluent (AnPOME). The best ratio cellulose to magnetite powder and volume of closslinker was chose based on optimum removal of turbidity, total suspended solid (TSS), colour and chemical oxygen demand (COD) from sample wastewater. Result shows that the best combination cellulose to magnetite powder are 1: 1 (g/g) with glutaraldehyde volume of 1.5 mL. This optimum parameters show about 74.60 %, 63.90 %, 77.20 %, and 55.80 % reduction in turbidity, colour, TSS, and COD. Overall, approach to produce magnetic cellulose as newly hybrid flocculant has potential to substitute existence flocculants due to the better performance.