Photocatalytic treatment technology for palm oil mill effluent (POME) – A review

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis review provides insight into various techniques utilized for the treatments of palm oil mill effluents (POME). Generally, POME treatment is achieved in two ways, these are (1) pretreatment stages, involving majorly the reduction of oil and grease and suspended matter and (2) an advanced treatment stage, in which wastewater contaminants (e.g. BOD 5 , COD) are reduced to standard discharge limits. Different methods utilized in the treatment of POME such as coagulation-flocculation, anaerobic, aerobic and membrane technology are explained fully and recent trends in their advancement and improvement are outlined. Though, various pilot or industrial scale treatment plants have been reported in scientific literature for POME treatments methods such as anaerobic, aerobic and membrane technology, the literature is still scarce for application of photocatalytic degradation technology to POME treatment as the technology is still in development stage and has not been fully utilized on an industrial scale in palm oil mill industries. This is mainly as a result of inadequate investigation involving POME degradation. The review presented here is focused on photocatalytic degradation technology and reflects published outcomes with the aim of offering the technique as an attractive and sustainable process units. Also the potential of the process to replace some of the well-known separation and degradation technologies has been highlighted at advanced treatment stage for POME.

Treatment of Palm Oil Mill Effluent Using Membrane Bioreactor: Novel Processes and Their Major Drawbacks

“…Hybrid processes encompass a systematic combination of the anaerobic, anoxic and aerobic process to improve treatment efficiencies [46,54,160]. Hybrid MBR (HybMBR) provide a platform for anaerobically treated wastewater to undergo aerobic treatment, and this gives the possibility for chains processes such as biodegradation, de-chlorination, nitrification, denitrification as well as filtration process which usually takes place at the membrane section [38].…”

Visible Light Driven Photocatalystfor Degradation of Organophosphate Pesticides: A Review

“…The wide band gap of TiO2 restricts its light absorption in visible light region [28]. TiO2 itself can be classified into different types such as Degussa P25, Millennium PC50, PC100, PC105, PC500 UV100 and TTIP (titanium tetraisopropoxide) [29].…”

Recent Advances in Photocatalytic Treatment of Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME): A Review

“…However, this great margin may be due in part to nature of these measurements. The values in Table 1 are obtained from averages presented in several studies [1,34,43] who have also reported values averaged from other studies. There have been researchers reporting POME final discharge values that are orders of magnitudes higher than the DOE discharge limit.…”

“…Currently a vast majority of palm oil plantations (> 85%) employ aerobic and anaerobic digestion as the preferred method for the removal of much of the COD, BOD and total suspended solids (TSS) in raw POME [45,46]. This is usually preceded by pretreating the raw POME via mechanical and physiochemical processes of which coagulation/flocculation followed by sedimentation and filtration are commonly used [43]. The main purpose of pre-treatment is some removal of COD, total suspended solids (TSS) and turbidity prior to mode advanced treatment geared at reducing the bulk of the organic load.…”