Abstract
Palm oil mill effluent (POME) pollution is a serious issue that has gained the attention of an international audience including policy makers, mill owners, NGOs and academicians. With a production rate of 74 million metric tonnes a year, Malaysia is in dire need for new technologies able to address this mounting problem. While previous research has attempted to modify existing microbial driven organic degradation methods to optimize the organic load removal, new studies recognize the futility in this endeavour as mills are unwilling to change the way they operate and adopt these disruptive technologies. Instead current research aims at tertiary polishing technologies of which photocatalysis has emerged as a forerunner. Recent advances indicate photocatalytic treatment of POME is a viable solution to the problem but for it to be cost effective, future studies should focus on visible light driven processes and new reactor configurations to improve the photocatalytic activity of existing systems.
Highlights
Palm oil is the most lucrative and most cultivated commercial crop in Malaysia
Many methods have been proposed to deal with palm oil mill effluent (POME) such as adsorption [6], coagulation/flocculation [7,8,9], microbial fuel cells [10, 11], ultrasonicassisted membrane anaerobic system (UAMAS) [12], up-flow anaerobic sludge fixed film (UASFF) reactor [13, 14], modified anaerobic baffled bioreactor (MABB) [15], continuous stirred tank reactors (CSTR) [16], up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors [17, 18], expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactors [19, 20], membrane filtration [21,22,23] and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31]
Palm oil production is a huge industry in Malaysia and Indonesia and as such is accompanied by a sizable waste management problem
Summary
Palm oil is the most lucrative and most cultivated commercial crop in Malaysia. It is clear that there is a much larger volume of research dedicated to AOPs than other forms of POME treatment This is primarily due to the general opinion that the open ponding method employed by more than 85% of palm oil millers is too well entrenched and resistant to disruptive technologies that require a complete revamp of the mills’ waste treatment processes [19, 21, 32, 33].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: International Journal of Engineering & Technology
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
