AEROBIC TREATMENT OF ANAEROBICAL Y TREATED PALM OIL MILL EFFLUENT

This report is basically the preliminary research done and basic understanding of the chosen
topic, which is the Aerobic Treatment of the Anaerobically Treated Palm Oil Mill Effluent
(POME). Anaerobically digestion is widely used as the method for the POME treatment but
the result has difficulty meeting the discharge limits set by the Department of Environment
(DOE) due to high organic strength of POME. Hence, aerobic treatment is introduce to
treated the effluent from the anaerobically digestion. The Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) is
an aerobic treatment system used for this research. The final result of Chemical Oxygen
Demand (COD), Soluble Chemical Oxygen Demand (sCOD), Biochemical Oxygen Demand
(BOD), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), pH, temperature, Mixed Liquor Suspended Solids
(MLSS) and Mixed Liquor Volatile Suspended Solids (MLVSS) are the parameters to
evaluate the performance of the SBR in treating the anaerobically treated POME. A 5-litres
SBR was fed with the anaerobic treated POME as the influent and seeded with the sludge
from two different sources; Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) in UTP and Nasaruddin Palm Oil
Mill in Bota, Perak. A 12-hours cycle and 24-hours cycle was conducted in treating the 5-litre
of wastewater per cycle. Initially the wastewaterwas characterized according to the
parameters of BOD, COD, sCOD, TSS, pH, temperature, MLSS and MLVSS. Some changes
made during the research in order to get the most optimum parameters SBR performance;
influent concentration, sludge concentration, aeration time and hydraulic retention time
(HRT). The sCOD removal efficiency can achieved up to 32%. The optimum sludge
concentration is ranging between 11000 to 14000 mg/L for ML VSS. It is envisaged that the
SBR process could complement the anaerobic treatment to produce final treated effluent
which meets the discharge limit.