Ecological Significance of Dynamism of Physiologic Variance on Properties of Palm Oil Mill Effluents

Abstract

Properties a given waste is essential for rationale comprehension of plausible way(s) for its remediation. In the present study, POME from oil milling centre at Anambra state showed high heterotrophic activity of microorganisms. Total viable counts of the organisms isolated from the waste water were 5.4 x 103 CFU/ml and 4.4 x 103 CFU/ml at day 0 and day 7 of the incubation respectively. These observations showed a significant variation from the control experiment at these recorded days of incubations which shows total viable cell counts (TVC) of 4.6 x 103 and 2.9 x 104 CFU/ml respectively. Total coliform counts (TCC) of the organisms isolated from the dairy waste water were 1.3 x 103 and 1.8 x 103 CFU/ml for the day 0 and day 7 incubation periods respectively while the TCC from the control experiment were: 8.0 x 102 and 3.2 x 102 CFU/ml for day 0 and day 7 incubation periods respectively. POME sample from Awka, Anambra state was subjected to various physicochemical profiling and was further optimized at different conditions to exert various variability. Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) is one of the important physical parameter widely used in assessment of quality of aqueous surroundings. Physicochemical properties of waste water from the milling centre showed the following: pH (5.0), temperature (41oC), conductivity (610); water dissolved minerals such as Cl-, K+, PO3, Mg2+, Ca2+ were all determined. Initial dissolved oxygen concentration (mg/l) of the waste water was determined using a probe connected to a meter with initial value of 39.4 mg/l. Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) was determined after five incubation days at room temperature in separate bottles optimized at varying pH of 4.0-9.0 in a range of 1.0 units. BOD5 decreases with increased pH values in all the tested samples incubated for 5 days. pH 5.0 gave a significant reduction of the oxygen exertion (1400 mg/ml) while pH 4.0, 6.0, 7.0 showed an oxygen exertion (BOD5) of 1978, 2778, and 2965 mg/ml respectively. Samples incubated at 8.0 and 9.0 showed oxygen exertion of 2945 and 2899 mg/ml respectively. Other contents of the dairy waste water such as total organic carbon (TOC), total organic matter contents (TOM) were all determined respectively. Samples was also collected from mapped area 0.5 km away from the waste water reservoir and used as the reference standard. Proceeding results from the present research study showed the compromised statues of our aquatic environment and also in a wider look gave a great insight of effective modalities in water treatment; as increasing population of myriads of processing industries in our country today pose great challenge to the competence of our aquatic body.