Investigation of Temperature Effect on Start-Up Operation from Anaerobic Digestion of Acidified Palm Oil Mill Effluent

Muhammad Arif Fikri Hamzah,Ahmad Jaril Asis,Peer Mohamed Abdul,Jamaliah Md Jahim

doi:10.3390/en12132473

Muhammad Arif Fikri Hamzah, Ahmad Jaril Asis + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en12132473

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Abstract

Malaysia is one of the largest palm oil producers worldwide and its most abundant waste, palm oil mill effluent (POME), can be used as a feedstock to produce methane. Anaerobic digestion is ideal for treating POME in methane production due to its tolerance to high-strength chemical oxygen demand (COD). In this work, we compared the culture conditions during the start-up of anaerobic digestion of acidified POME between thermophilic (55 °C) and mesophilic (37 °C) temperatures. The pH of the digester was maintained throughout the experiment at 7.30 ± 0.2 in a working volume of 1000 mL. This study revealed that the thermophilic temperature stabilized faster on the 44th day compared to the 52nd day for the mesophilic temperature. Furthermore, the thermophilic temperature indicated higher biogas production at 0.60 L- CH 4 /L·d compared to the mesophilic temperature at 0.26 L- CH 4 /L·d. Results from this study were consistent with the COD removal of thermophilic temperature which was also higher than the mesophilic temperature.

Highlights

Malaysia is the main producer of palm oil in the world, with ~19.9 million tons of crude palm oil generated in 2017 [1]
Productive acclimatization was demonstrated by Abd Nasir et al [20], wherein acclimatization was operated at low organic loading rate (OLR) (0.5 g chemical oxygen demand (COD)/L·d) and successfully attained 3.59 L-CH4/d of biogas production
We evaluated the significance of understanding the operation monitoring and acclimatization behavior during the anaerobic digestion of methane

Summary

Introduction

Malaysia is the main producer of palm oil in the world, with ~19.9 million tons of crude palm oil generated in 2017 [1]. POME appears as brownish liquid, has high chemical oxygen demand (COD), and is usually discharged directly at high temperatures [2]. To solve this problem, anaerobic digestion is a method that can be used to treat organic wastes for the production of methane [3]. Palm oil mills in Malaysia have generally used close tank in POME treatment to maximize methane collection. Until 2013, about 50% of palm oil mills still applied the pond system to treat POME without capturing methane gas [4] because a considerable amount of land is available in Malaysia [5]. The challenge in the construction of biogas plants is the high investment needed compared to the open pond system, because investors consider this project a high risk due to the utilization of POME as a new method of biogas production

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