Use of Micro-algae to treat Palm Oil Mill Effluent

Is it not obvious that most of us know that wastes from industrial estates are dangerous to our environment especially to the aquatic lives!, in the same manner, the production of Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) channeled into small rivers from palm oil industries, is significantly harmful to our environment because of its high level of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) that affects the natural life cycle of living things.

POME flowing into water source.

Raw POME

The problem comes when POME seep into the soil and end up flowing into nearby clean rivers. Its high BOD and COD content causes POME to consume oxygen in the river which results in insufficient oxygen content to aquatic plants and animals which crucially need oxygen in the first place. Not to forget its high Total Suspended Solids (TSS) will contaminate the natural water source and its full smell is bad enough to make everyone dizzy, hence causing water and air pollution.

Looking at the graphs of annual Malaysia palm oil exports below, it is just impossible to stop our industries from producing oil because of its effect on our environment but we need to find a solution to the problems its production brings on our already stretched environment.

With this in mind, in one of the project I participated in under the title, “Multi-Functional Chamber for Algal Growth, Maintenance & Recovery”, we cultured algae to determine its potential as waste remedial agent and as an alternative source of biodiesel. The latter objective is an additional advantage of micro-algae as the treated cells can be converted to lipid to produce biodiesel. Particularly for this project, we focused on how to grow, maintain and recover algae in a laboratory setting in POME, but first we carried out few experiments of growing algae in sea water as the main medium. This is because we must study the behavior of the microalgae before introducing it to POME, which is easier if we carry it out in sea water. From our experiments, the results gained clearly showed that microalgae have big potential to treat POME by lowering its BOD and COD content.

cultured micro-algae

Take a look at the result below. Is there any argument that can prevent us from not taking this opportunity to use micro-algae to treat POME, besides we need not even to worry about the cost of micro-algae because they are in abundance all over Malaysia. Our main task is only to make it work. 

Parameter	Range	Before treatment	After treatment with algae
COD	15,000-100,000 mg/L	65,271.7 mg/L	11,238.88 mg/L
BOD	10,250-43,750 mg/L	24,116.66 mg/L	5716.230 mg/L

Do yourself a favor to save your environment when you are still alive.