Abstract
Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is a major concern as open lagoon technology is not environment-friendly. Therefore, the palm oil industry refers to a roundtable on sustainable palm oil (RSPO), Indonesian sustainable palm oil (ISPO), and Malaysian sustainable palm oil (MSPO) standards for POME treatment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. An alternative POME treatment technology is the combination of open lagoon technology (COLT) with composting, biogas technology plus composting, biogas technology plus membrane, and biogas technology plus land application. The objective of this study is to analyze the life cycle assessment (LCA) result using a multi-criteria decision approach and to determine the implementation of POME treatment in the RSPO, ISPO, and MSPO standards. The LCA system boundary was considered from gate-to-gate and unit per ton of fresh fruit bunch as a functional unit. SimaPro® was used as the LCA analysis tool; Expert Choice® and Super Decision Software® were used to perform the analytic hierarchy process and analytic network process, respectively. In this study, COLT–Biogas plus composting technology had the maximum priority weight (0.470), according to the opinion of experts. The results could help palm oil mill decision-makers in choosing environment-friendly POME treatment technology.
Highlights
Palm oil is one of the most important commodities in Indonesia, and palm oil production continues to increase, especially in the last decades
Among the assessments for the best environment-friendly palm oil mill effluent” (POME) treatment, the most important criterion based on the expert opinion was GWP (48.1%), followed by AP (26.8%), EP (14%), and the least important was HTP (11.1%)
Sequence life cycle assessment (LCA) and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA)-based assessments were employed to evaluate the environmental impacts of alternative POME treatment technologies
Summary
Palm oil is one of the most important commodities in Indonesia, and palm oil production continues to increase, especially in the last decades. Criteria 5.6.2: the results of the identification of significant sources of pollutants and GHG emissions must be made available, as well as plans and implementation documents to reduce or minimize pollution and emissions. Criteria 5.6.3: a plan and the results of periodic monitoring of emissions and pollution from oil palm plantations and mill activities using appropriate methods must be made available. LCA and MCDA were sequentially applied to find the best combination of POME processing technology to replace open lagoon technology. As COD of treated POME of biogas still exceeds the standard environmental acceptance criteria when released to the surrounding area (such as rivers and lakes), land application technology is used as the final technology to treat the treated POME from the biogas reactor/digester, resulting in fertilizer in its liquid form being applied to the palm plantations. Truck (3.5 x 10-4 L) Turning machine (7.2 x 10-4 L) Mini tractor (1.77 x 10-4 L)
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