ENHANCEMENT OF ATTACHED GROWTH PROCESS USING BANANA PEELS AND ORANGE PEEL IN TREATING SECONDARY POME
Main article
Abstract
Secondary palm oil mill effluent (POME) is a type of high organic strength wastewater that are produced from palm oil mill processing. It has been identified as a major contributor to water pollution issue due to its high COD, BOD, TSS and colour concentration. This study aims at enhancement of attached growth process using low-cost adsorbents in treating secondary POME. Attached growth system consists of immobile packing media so that microorganisms can grow as biofilm on the media and oxidize the pollutants in secondary POME. Meanwhile, carbonized orange peel powder and carbonized banana peel powder can be added into the attached growth system and be used as a bio-adsorbent to remove remaining pollutants from secondary POME. In this study, the highest COD, BOD, TSS and colour removal efficiency achieved by modified attached growth system with the addition of carbonized orange peel powder was 65.4%, 67.8%, 40% and 65.9% respectively. Whereas, the highest COD, BOD, TSS and colour removal efficiency achieved by modified attached growth system with the addition of carbonized banana peel powder was 88.5%, 71.0%, 40% and 88.6% respectively. This finding is probably beneficial to low cost and environmentally friendly adsorbents which can be used in wastewater treatment
