Affordable Treatment System for Palm Oil Mill Effluent

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Ewelike et al., J. Appl. Biosci. 2019 Affordable Treatment System for Palm Oil Mill Effluent

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Journal of Applied Biosciences 142: 14560 - 14563

ISSN 1997-5902

Affordable Treatment System for Palm Oil Mill Effluent

Ewelike Nicholas .C.¹, Uche I.C² and Okechukwu R.I³

Department of Microbiology, Federal University Of Technology, Owerri Department of Microbiology, Federal University Of Technology, Owerri Department of Biological Sciences, Federal University Of Technology, Owerri Correspondence; cewelyke@gmail.com, +2348063289845

Original submitted in on 30^th March 2017. Published online at www.m.elewa.org/journals/ on 31^stOctober 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jab.v142i1.8

ABSTRACT

Objectives: The aim of this project is to design a low-cost, high performance filtration system from biological raw materials for the treatment of palm oil mill effluent.

Methodology and results: Seedless maize cobs were laid in a column of 5.0cm diameter and 65cm height.

Distilled water was allowed to drain out through the packed column to displace air bubbles. Untreated palm oil mill effluent was filtered through the column and was analyzed before and after filtration. Microbiological analyses of the effluent after filtration showed that the system was capable of providing about 86% reduction in the effluent microbial load. The filter unit produced a clarified effluent, which was odourless and colourless.

Further analysis of the effluent after filtration showed a considerable reduction in the concentration of the following parameters; oil and grease was reduced by 99.9%, BOD5 by 99.8%, COD by 99.8%, Nitrate by 97.4%, sodium by 99.3%, potassium by 99.3%, phosphate by 98.5% and sulphate by 99.5%. The filter also provided 100% reduction in the concentrations of various metals.

Conclusion and application of findings: The results obtained by the operation of this treatment system have conclusively shown that it can produce a high quality treated effluent, which can be disposed to the environment without any adverse effects or associated human health risks. The filtration unit provided clarified effluent, which was odourless and colourless. This could be a very efficient and natural method of treating palm oil mill effluent and could be applied in the recycling of other types of wastewater. Maize cob is an agricultural solid waste, which in itself needs management, but is here being converted into good use. The raw material is readily available and cheap to procure; hence, it is cost effective to use it for the treatment of POME. The use of this locally sourced material in the fabrication of the filter unit that efficiently treated palm oil mill effluent makes the operation cheap, affordable and of great economic importance

INTRODUCTION

Palm oil is an important product in tropical areas where palm trees grow readily. The oil is an edible substance extracted from the mesocarp of the fruit of palm tree (Gharleghi and Yn-Fah, 2013). Palm oil mills account for major production of palm oil in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand and in some West African countries including Nigeria. In Nigeria, palm oil processing in palm oil mills is a product of modern

technology and an approach to the problems of poor industrialization and inadequate utilization of natural resources. The extraction processes are generally mechanical and involve several stages such as sterilization, bunch stripping, digestion, oil extraction and finally clarification and purification (Adeniyi et al., 2014). Large quantities of water are used during the extraction of crude oil from the fresh fruits and about

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14561 50% of the water result in palm oil mill effluent (POME). The raw or partially treated POME has an extremely high organic matter, which is due in part to the presence of unrecovered oil. This highly polluting wastewater if not properly treated before disposal on land will cause environmental degradation such as damage of vegetation and wild life (MC Laughlin, 1992) and odour emission which in turn attracts flies and vermin (Wong et al., 2002). Disposal into public watercourses will result in dissolved oxygen depletion due to microbial activity, which endangers the life of aquatic organisms (Grant and Ling, 1981).

Several innovative treatment technologies have been developed and applied by palm oil mills to treat POME. The three most common treatment systems adopted by palm oil industries in most palm oil producing countries are the ponding system, open tank digester and extended aeration system, and

closed anaerobic digester and land application system (Gee and Chua, 1995). Although the existing POME treatment technologies and processes have proven to be effective in reducing the biodegradable organic content of POME, however, the processes are expensive to maintain, difficult to operate and requires expertise (Paramitadevi and Rahmatullah, 2017). Moreover, the residual oil in POME poses a problem on the maintenance of the systems because palm oil is not easily degraded by microorganisms.

Hence, there is the need to seek alternative and more efficient means of treating POME that is easy and cheap to handle (Igwe and Onyegbado, 2007).

The aim of this work, therefore, is to design a low- cost, high-performance biofilter system from agricultural waste material for the treatment of palm oil mill effluent.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Collection of materials; The packing materials used for this work were seedless maize cobs collected from a post-harvest processing mill located in Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. The maize cobs were reduced to fine particles using corn cob grinding machine and laid in a column of 5.0cm diameter and 6.5cm height. One cubic decimetre of distilled water was allowed to drain out through the packed column to displace air bubbles. The effluent used was untreated palm oil mill effluent (POME) collected from palm oil processing mill in Ohaji, Imo State, Nigeria.

The effluent was preserved by refrigeration while samples to be analyzed for oil and grease were preserved with 2cm³ of concentrated sulphuric acid. The filter unit was run six hours per day for fifteen days. The effluent samples were analyzed before and after filtration.

Microbiological and physicochemical analysis;

Microbial determination was limited to bacterial content only. The method used was pour plate in nutrient or plate count agar plates incubated at 37⁰c for 24hrs. the physicochemical characteristics analyzed were; Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5), Total Suspended Solid (TSS), Oil and grease, nitrate, phosphate, sulphate, sodium, iron, copper, aluminium chromium, zinc , lead and potassium. These determinations were done using standard methods for the examination of water and wastewaters (APHA, 1995) Statistical analysis: The mean and standard deviation of the values of each of the parameters were calculated to determine how much variation or dispersion from the average exists.

RESULTS

The results of the physicochemical analysis of the untreated palm oil mill effluent are presented in table 1.

The results of the various determinations showed that the raw POME had a pH of 4.8, oil and grease was 43800mg/L and chemical oxygen demand was 53,000mg/L. total suspended solids was 40210mg/L, nitrate; 30.4mg/L, sulphate; 952mg/L, phosphate 277mg/L, sodium; 870mg/L and potassium 305mg/L.

None of the heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury was present. The microbial load of the raw POME was 1.8 x 10⁵ CFU/mL. These results were higher

than the acceptable limits recommended by World Health Organisation for discharge into the environment. The results of the effect of the treatment method on the microbiological and physicochemical components of the effluent are presented in table 2. The filter unit provided 86% reduction in microbial load. Oil and grease was reduced by 99.9%, COD by 99.8%, total suspended solids by 99.9% and sulphate by 99.5%. None of the metals was detected after treatment, giving a 100%

reduction in the concentration of various metals.

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Table 1: Physico-chemical and microbiological analysis of untreated palm oil mill effluent.

Parameter Concentration (mg/L)

Oil and grease 43800

TSS 40210

BOD5 25000

COD 53000

Nitrate 30.40

Sodium 1870

Iron 13.51

Copper 0.10

Aluminium 0.30

Zinc 0.71

Potassium 305

Phosphate 277

Sulphate 952

pH = 4.8

Total microbial count = 1.8 x 10⁵ CFU/mL

Table 2: The effect of the packing material (maize cob) on the physico-chemical and microbial content of POME Parameters analyzed Concentration after filtration (mg/L) Reduction (%)

Oil and grease 12.00 99.97

TSS 2.31 99.99

BOD5 50.00 99.80

COD 80.02 99.84

Nitrate 0.80 97.37

Sodium 12.51 99.33

Iron 0.00 100.00

Copper 0.00 100.00

Aluminium 0.00 100.00

Zinc 0.00 100.00

Potassium 200 99.34

Phosphate 4.22 98.48

Sulphate 5.01 99.47

pH = 7.6

Final microbial count = 2.5 x 10⁴ CFU/mL, % reduction 86.11 (Value is below recommended acceptable limit) Percentage Reduction = C1 - C2 X 100

C1

Where: C1 = Concentration before treatment C2 = Concentration after treatment DISSCUSSION

Effluent filtration is one of the most commonly adopted methods in wastewater management. Filtration is often accomplished by passing the wastewater to be filtered through a filter bed composed of granular materials with or without the addition of chemicals. One or more removal mechanisms such as straining, interception, impact sedimentation and adsorption, accomplish the removal of substances contained in the wastewater (Prayong, 2014).

Biofiltration is an emerging energy-efficient technology for

the control of volatile organic compounds (VOCs); it has been extensively used in the control of odours from wastewater treatment facilities, composting facilities and other odour-producing operations (Detchanamurthy and Gostomski, 2012). The use of biofter in this study, fabricated from local raw material, maize cob to remove colour, odour and other components of palm oil mill effluent marks a clear application of biofiltration and bioconversion technologies in the management of

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14563 industrial effluent. The biofilter reduced the physicochemical components of palm oil mill effluent by 97-100%

(table 2). Similar observation has been reported by other investigators (Smith and Smith, 1994) (Slingh et al., 2003). The ability to reduce the physico-chemical components and to remove colour and odour from effluent is attributed to the adsorptive property of the cellulosic material present in maize cob (Gurusamy et al., 2002). The use of this local raw material, i.e. maize cob that in itself constitutes bulk solid waste, requiring management is advocated. The production of portable unit for water purification based on local raw materials had been reported (Ette et al., 2000). The mechanism by

which microorganisms were eliminated from the biofilter is likely to be the process of microbial antagonism. This simply means that the stressed microorganisms in the primary effluent were outcompeted by the indigenous micro flora of the filter material. The antimicrobial properties of similar filtration units have been reported (Hugh and Namona, 2000). In conclusion, treatment of palm oil mill effluent using a biofilter fabricated from local raw material produced a high-quality effluent, which was also odourless and colourless. This provides an affordable and efficient method for the treatment of palm oil mill effluent and could be applied as a natural method in the recycling of wastewater.

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