Acclimatization and performance study of palm oil mill effluent (POME) in closed anaerobic reactor

Abstract

Anaerobic reactor system is particularly effective to reduce pollutant of the high strength wastewater and produces the biogas. POME wastewater considered as polluting contaminants due to its high organic load was treated using suspended closed anaerobic reactor (SCAR) at different hydraulic retention time (HRT). Thus, this performance study focuses on the effects of different hydraulic retention time, to various parameters inside and effluent quality of a reactor. The treatment of POME wastewater is conducted at the HRT of 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2 days, which correspond to the feed flow-rates as 0.375, 0.450, 0.563, 0.750, 1.125 and 2.250 liters of raw POME per day. The performance study showed that the treatment of POME wastewater could be treated effectively through SCAR at different HRT. The optimum performances for chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency are 87.08% for 12 days of HRT. While shorter the hydraulic retention time, the COD removal efficiency will be lower with in the range of 63.87% and 38.20% between 10 days and 2 days of HRT. Besides, the biomass MLVSS concentrations of SCAR are 20958 mg/l for 12 days of HRT and increased to 43226 mg/l for 2 days of HRT. Moreover, the total alkalinity increased from 5902 until 7716 mg CaCO3/l, respectively from the HRT of 12 days until 2 days.