An overview of anaerobic treatment processes performance treating palm oil mill effluent (POME)-past, present and future

• Published in: Advanced Science Letters
• Main Author: Mansor U.Q.A.; Yahya A.; Shafie N.F.A.; Roslan Q.I.; Manshor N.M.; Som A.M.; Nour A.H.; Hassan Z.; Yunus R.M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Scientific Publishers 2017
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85023757259&doi=10.1166%2fasl.2017.8238&partnerID=40&md5=90d094c40baea6fe557474e8f63cd83d

Recently, the increased world demand in palm oil application results in increased production of palm oil. Weakness in conventional way of waste water handling has caused detrimental effect to the environment. It creates major problem in disposing of the waste in appropriate ways. The governments are forced to look for alternative technology for the palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment because the demand of oil increases with the increased awareness on environmental issue. Therefore, a new technology must be searched in order to reduce energy consumption, to meet strict legal requirements on emission to reduce cost and also to increase treated water quality. The purpose of this article is to discuss a full-scale review on the conventional treatment and updated recent treatment processes for palm oil mill effluent. The latest contemporary technique, i.e., ultrasonic membrane anaerobic system (UMAS) is added with the view as an alternative, new approach to reduce the environmental problems caused by POME. © 2017 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.