Wastewater treatment of Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) through Photocatalytic process

Abstract

Water pollution is the foulness of water bodies that mostly occurred in lakes and groundwater. Most of the water pollution comes from industry area which generated dangerous effluent that affected entire biosphere. One type of water pollution is palm oil mill effluent (POME) that contains tremendous concentration of organic matter. Photocatalytic degradation process was used to remediate the POME in wastewater industries. The objectives of this study are to characterize POME wastewater, to investigate the effect of operating parameters such as the initial concentration of POME, Zinc Oxide (ZnO) dosage, pH, aeration and radiation for photocatalytic process and to study the kinetics (Langmuir-Hinshelwood model) and mineralization of photocatalytic degradation of POME wastewater. This study includes the characterization of POME in parameter of BOD5, COD, suspended solids, turbidity and pH. Furthermore, the effect of operating parameter also been studied in condition of sunlight and UV light irradiation within 6 hours of reaction time. The results shows that photocatalytic degradation under UV light irradiation is more high percentage of removal efficiency rather than sunlight and been supported by kinetic study by Langmuir-Hinshelwood model. Additionally, mineralization of POME with other photocatalyst such as TiO2, Fe2O3 and CuO were observed under sunlight irradiation. From this study, it shown that the best photocatalyst to carry out photocatalytic degradation of POME is ZnO.