Innovation with The use of probiotics as an eco-friendly tool for sewage and palm oil mill effluent treatment

Abstract

This research study is aimed to explore the potential of using probiotic, active microorganisms for both sewage and palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment. Probiotic strain contains 10 types of Bacillus strains including Bacillus catenulatus, Bacillus careus, Bacillus drentensis, Bacillus firmus, Bacillus flexus, Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus niaci, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus teguilensis, and Bacillus thuringiensis was used in this study. Bench-scale batch system was used to study the performance of probiotic for the treatment of sewage and aerobic digested POME. The treatment process was conducted for 10 days where the water sample was collected every consecutive 2 days for the analysis on total suspended solids (TSS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), phosphorus, biological oxygen demand (BOD), ammonia, and nitrate. The results depicted that probiotic was able to break down concentrated organic matters into simple amino acid, thereby reduces the sludge, COD, BOD, and odour. 300 mL probiotic presented the greatest performance in which the percentage of COD, BOD, TSS, phosphorus, NO3-N, and NH3-N removal was recorded as 100.00%, 100.00%, 0.00%, 64.66%, 0.00%, and 97.36%; and 75.44%, 100.00%, 17.24%, 69.77%, 0.00%, and 81.45% for sewage treatment and aerobic digested POME treatment, respectively after 10 days of retention time.