Effect of electrode materials on the degradation of palm oil mill effluent by electro-oxidation process

Abstract

In the recent decades, Malaysia has been known as the one of the palm oil producers and exporters. The increasing of the production and demand of palm oil tends to increase the Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME). Undeniably, the conventional biological treatment has been implemented to reduce the organic matters but insufficient to satisfy the discharge standard by the local authority. Consequently, the biological treated POME has to be treated further to meet the stringent discharge standard. Hence, an advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), electro-oxidation process (EOP) has been applied to treat further the biologically treated POME. There are two stages in this study, EOP carried on with catalyst and electrode (Al and Fe). Therefore, the performance of EOP is evaluated by investigating the removal efficiency on the organic parameters like COD, colour, suspended solid and NH3-N. The operational parameters are the pH adjustment (pH 3, 5, 7 and 9), contact time ranging from 0 to 60 min and the dosage of catalyst (H2O2 and TiO2). The highest degradation of the parameters was obtained under the most acidic solution pH 3, with addition of TiO2 by using Al electrode. The percentages of removal are 96.58 % of colour, 98.74 % of SS and 84.85 % of COD.