Wastewater Treatment Using Fruit Peels and Rice Husks

Abstract

Domestic and industrial activities produce wastewater that contain dangerous pollutants that might be harmful to society, public authorities and industry. As the world’s population grows and natural habitats deteriorate, securing clean water sources for everyone became more difficult. Remediation of wastewater using activated carbon from bio materials which is fruit peels and rice husks is gaining attention among research, as it reduces the cost of activated carbon production. Hence, activated carbon from rice husks and fruit peels were proposed to be used for wastewater treatment in this study. The activated carbon from fruit peels and rice husks are used to remediate wastewater using absorption method that are a low-cost and environmentally friendly alternative in treating wastewater. Carbonization process is the main approach to produce an activated charcoal, followed by chemical activation and adsorption process. The treated wastewater then undergoes several tests to evaluate the quality of wastewater after absorption treatment such as Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), pH test, colour test and heavy metal removal test. As a result, for COD test, the value of untreated and treated wastewater is 1.24 mg/L and 0.53 mg/L. For BOD test for treated and untreated wastewater is 4.98 mg/L and 3.90 mg/L. It also changed the pH value from 8.21 to 7.98 after the treatment process. For colour test, it also decreased for before and after treatment which is 91 %. For heavy metal removal, which is Zinc metal, the value also decreased from 0.0097 mg/L to 0.0052 mg/L. It is proven that fruit peels and rice husks to be effective to treat the textile wastewater while still being low cost-effective for its production.