Production of Biogas using Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) in Anaerobic Digester

The palm oil industry is one of the leading industries in Malaysia with a yearly production of more than 13 million tons of crude palm oil and plantations covering 11% of the Malaysian land area. However, the production of such amounts of crude palm oil result in even larger amounts of palm oil mill effluent (POME), estimated at nearly three times the quantity of crude palm oil. Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is a highly polluting wastewater that pollutes the environment if discharged directly due to its high chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) concentration. Anaerobic digestion has been widely used for POME treatment with large emphasis placed on capturing the methane gas released as a product of this biodegradation treatment method. The anaerobic digestion method is recognized as a clean development mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto protocol. Certified emission reduction (CER) can be obtained by using methane gas as a renewable energy. This project aim is to do a research on the factors that contribute to the optimization of biogas production. Potential factors to the anaerobic digestion process of POME were indentified and tested in laboratory by using Anaerobic Respirometer. These factors such as addition of co-substrate, volume of inoculums, volume of POME and PH of samples were analyzed and monitored to see its relation to the production of biogas. The total gas production volume and gas production rate in the experiment were gathered and their composition were tested in Gas Chromatography to analyze the percentage of Methane present. From this project those four (4) factors were identified to have significant effects to the biogas production volume, rate as well as the percentage of Methane present in the biogas composition. These factors are applicable to prove in this research by conducting experiment in the laboratory with existing equipments.