Adsorption of residual oil from palm oil mill effluent using rubber powder

Abstract

-A synthetic rubber powder was used to adsorb the residual oil in palm oil mill effluent (POME). POME is the wastewater produced by the palm oil industry. It is a colloidal suspension which is 95-96% water, 0.6-0.7% oil and 4-5% total solids including 2-4% suspended solids originating in the mixing of sterilizer condensate, separator sludge and hydrocyclone wastewater. POME contains 4,000 mg dm -3 of oil and grease, which is relatively high compared to the limit of only 50 mg dm -3 set by the Malaysian Department of Environment. A bench-scale study of the adsorption of residual oil in POME using synthetic rubber powder was conducted using a jar test apparatus. The adsorption process was studied by varying parameters affecting the process. The parameters were adsorbent dosage, mixing speed, mixing time and pH. The optimum values of the parameters were obtained. It was found that almost 88% removal of residual oil was obtained with an adsorbent dosage of 30 mg dm -3 and mixing speed of 150 rpm for 3 hr at a pH 7. Adsorption equilibrium was also studied, and it was found that the adsorption process on the synthetic rubber powder fit the Freundlich isotherm model.

Investigation of Three Pre-treatment Methods Prior to Nanofiltration Membrane for Palm Oil Mill Effluent Treatment

“…Some example of biological of pre-treatment of POME are anaerobic fluidized bed (Borja & Banks 1995), two stage of up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (Borja et al 1996), anaerobic digester (Chan et al 2010), aerobic treatment (Vijayaraghavan et al 2007), rotating biological contactor (Najafpour et al 2005) and sludge fixed film bioreactor (Zinatizadeh et al 2006). Meanwhile to reduce the long residence time, some of the researchers have been investigated the physicalchemical pre-treatment, solvent extraction (Hameed et al 2003), coagulation (Ahmad et al 2006), dissolved air flotation (Ng et al 1988), adsorption (Ahmad et al 2005) and ultrafiltration (Said et al 2014).…”

Recovery of Residual Oil From Palm Oil Mill Effluent Using Polypropylene Nanofiber: A Field Trial

“…Several techniques have reported on the recovery of oil such as adsorption of residual oil from palm oil mill effluent using rubber powder (A.L. Ahmad et al, 2005); solvent extraction, chemical-biological, sedimentation, flocculation, natural fibrous sorbent (Wahi, Chuah, Choong, Ngaini, & Nourouzi, 2013), coalescing, and centrifuge, flotation and coagulation methods (T. Laohaprapanon, P. Prasertsan, & A. H. Kittikun, 2005). However, these methods have poor efficiency to separate emulsified oil-water waste with surfactants (Chen, Liang, Tang, Shen, & Hu, 2017) and normally very expensive.…”

Bioadsorption by sugarcane bagasse for the reduction in oil and grease content in aqueous effluent

“…2009) and reed canary grass, for which the equivalent value is reported to be 2-4 kg (Pasila 2004). When compared to another synthetic adsorbents on the removal of hydrocarbons present in water, as rubber powder (Ahmad et al 2005) and polypropylene (Rengasamy et al 2011), our adsorbent presented lower capacity of adsorption. However, we have to take into account that the sugarcane bagasse is from a renewable source, produced in large scale and has high power of retention, low cost of implementation and acquisition and does not need regeneration after its use, since the biomass can be dried and burned.…”