Use of Bioactivator mixture for the composting process of empty fruit bunch

Abstract

The development of palm oil industry generates large numbers of empty fruit bunches (EFB) as a by-product. Commonly, palm oil industries discharge EFB to their plantation as mulching. However, this strategy requires a large space, a lot of labours, high costs for EFB distribution and it reduces soil fertility due to its oil content. An alternative method that can be applied for reducing EFB is by composting the EFB. However, the drawback of this approach is the long duration of this composting process. Hence the purpose of this study was to shorten the duration of the EFB composting by mixing EFB with some bioactivator consisting of agro-wastes such as palm oil mill effluent, Eucalyptus leaf litter and biosludge of pulp and paper (BPP). The composting of EFB used passive aeration method in the reactor bin with the composting duration for 90 days. During the composting process, physical changes such as colour, odour, texture and temperature were recorded every day. Chemical changes such as pH, moisture content, macronutrients, micronutrients, heavy metal contents and bacterial concentrations were analyzed for every ten days interval. Findings of this study showed that BPP was the best bioactivator in the composting of EFB. The optimization of EFB composting process was carried out by setting the EFB size and adjusting the initial moisture ratio. The best treatment combination was using SR6 which was EFB size of 1.5 cm with a mixture ratio of 60 % of EFB and 40 % of BPP. Finally, the resulted compost from treatment of SR6 was tested in the plantation study, and the best dose for enhancing the growth and yield of corn was using compost of 35 ton/ha. For future study, mechanical treatment and forced aeration method are suggested to be applied before starting the composting process. In addition, soil analysis and comparison between the application of organic and chemical fertilizers are suggested to be observed in order to know the effect of compost application.