Acetogenic removal efficiency of POME under the influence of electromagnetic field

Abstract

Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is categorized as high strength wastewater. The current treatment technology for POME is mostly depends on biological treatment through anaerobic and aerobic processes. Application of magnetic field was reported able to show effective removal performance of pollutant. The exposure of magnetic field will cause changes on the physical and chemical properties on a molecular level. The main objective of this research is to evaluate the application of EMF to enhance the performance of acetogenic microbes towards POME treatment. In this study, the EMF was evaluated in batch reactor system under an anaerobic acetogenic condition followed by aerobic reaction phase to treat POME. The hydraulic retention time and the intensity of EMF applied in this study were five days and ±15 mT respectively. The results indicated that using EMF improves the removal performance of color by 19%, chemical oxygen demand (COD) by 28%, ammonia nitrogen by 13%, nitrite by 17% and nitrate by 31%. Ultimately, the application of EMF helps to enhance anaerobic acetogenic bacteria and then enhanced the overall removal performance.