DESALINATION

ELSEVIER

Desalination 157 (2003) 87-95

www.elsevier.com/locate/desal

Water recycling from palm oil mill effluent (POME) using

membrane technology
Abdul LatifAhmad*, Suzylawati Ismail, Subhash Bhatia
School of Chemical Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Seri Ampangan,
14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang, Maylasia
Tel. +60 (4) 593-7788; Fax +60 (4) 594-1013; emaiL"chlatiJ~eng.usm.my
Received 6 February 2003; accepted 12 February 2003

Abstract

Malaysia is the largest producer and exporter of palm oil. Palm oil processing is carried out in palm oil mills where
oil is extracted from a palm oil fruit bunch. Large quantities of water are used during the extraction of crude palm oil
from the fresh fruit bunch, and about 50% of the water results in palm oil mill effluent (POME). POME is a thick
brownish liquid that contains high amounts of total solids (40,500 mg/L), oil and grease (4000 rag/L), COD
(50,000 mg/L) and BOD (25,000 mg/L). The disposal of this highly polluting effluent is becoming a major problem if
it is not being treated properly besides a stringent standard limit imposed by The Malaysian Department of Environment
for effluent discharged. A POME treatment system based on membrane technology shows high potential for eliminating
the environmental problem, and in addition, this alternative treatment system offers water recycling. The treated effluent
has a high quality and crystal clear water that can be used as the boiler feed water or as the source of drinking water
production. In our current research, a pilot plant was designed and constructed for POME treatment; two stages of
treatment have been conducted whereby coagulation, sedimentation and adsorption play their roles at the first stage as
a membrane pretreatment process, and ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis membranes are combined for the membrane
separation treatment. Results from the total treatment system show a reduction in turbidity, COD and BOD up to 100%,
98.8% and 99.4%, respectively, with a fmal pH of 7. Thus, the results show that this treatment system has a high
potential for producing boiler feed water that can be recycled back to the plant.
Keywords: Palm oil mill effluent; Pretreatment; Membrane technology; Water recycling

*Corresponding author.

Presented at the European Conference on Desalination and the Environment: Fresh Walerfor All, Malta, 4-8 May 2003.
European Desalination Society, International Water Association.
0011-9164/03/$- See front matter 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
PII: SOOl 1-9164(o3)00387-4

88

A.L. Ahmad et al. / Desalination 157 (2003) 87-95

1. Introduction

Oil palm is an important crop in Malaysia.

Approximately 11.9 million tones of crude palm
oil (CPO) were produced that amounted to
RM 14.79 billion in the year 2002 [1]. The
process to extract the oil requires significantly
large quantities of water for steam sterilizing the
palm fruit bunches and clarifying the extracted
oil. It is estimated that for 1 tonne of crude palm
oil produced, 5-7.5 tonnes of water are required,
and more than 50% of the water will end up as
palm oil mill effluent (POME). Thus, while
enjoying a most profitable commodity, the
adverse environmental impact from the palm oil
industry cannot be ignored.
POME is a colloidal suspension of 95-96%
water, 0.6-0.7% oil and 4-5% total solids
including 2-4% suspended solids originating
from the mixture of a sterilizer condensate,
separator sludge and hydrocyclone wastewater
[2]. The raw or partially treated POME has an
extremely high content of degradable organic
matter, which is due in part to the presence of
unrecovered palm oil. This highly polluting
wastewater can therefore cause severe pollution
of waterways due to oxygen depletion and other
related effects.
In order to regulate the discharge of effluent
from the crude palm oil industry as well as to
exercise other environmental controls, the
Environmental Quality (Prescribed Premises)
(Crude Palm Oil) Order, 1977, and the Environment Quality (Prescribed Premises) (Crude Palm
Oil) Regulations, 1977, were promulgated under
the Environmental Quality Act, 1974 [3]. The
POME characteristic and standard discharge limit
is illustrated in Table 1.
Due to these factors, the palm oil industry
faces the challenge of balancing the environmental protection, its economic viability and
sustainable development. There is an urgent need
to find a way to preserve the environment while
keeping the economy growing.

Table 1
Characteristics of POME and its respective standard discharge limit by the MalaysianDepartmentof the Environment [4]
Parameter
pH
Oil and grease
BOD
COD
Total solids
Suspended solids
Total nitrogen

Concentration,Standard
mg/L
limit, mg/L
4.7
5-9
4,000
50
25,000
100
50,00O
-40,500
-18,000
400
750
150

Several innovative treatment technologies

have been developed and applied by palm oil
mills to treat POME; conventional biological
treatments of anaerobic or facultative digestion
are the most commonly used [5]. However, this
biological treatment system needs proper maintenance and monitoring as the processes rely
solely on microorganisms to break down the
pollutants. The microorganisms are very sensitive
to changes in the environment and thus great care
has to be taken to ensure that a conducive
environment is maintained for the microorganisms in which to thrive. It also generates
vast amount of biogas. This biogas contains
methane, carbon dioxide and trace amounts of
hydrogen sulphide; these gases are corrosive and
odorous. The treated wastewater cannot be
reused in the plant, and it is being discharged into
the environment.
Another treatment process that can treat
POME as well as recover the water is the evaporation process [2]. By using POME containing
3--4% total solids as feed, about 85% of the water
in the POME can be recovered as distillate.
Unfortunately, the energy requirement is a major
constraint in this process, whereby under
standard conditions, specific energy consumption
is very high where 1 kg of steam is required per
1 kg of water evaporated.

A.L. Ahmad et aL / Desalination 157 (2003) 87-95

Treatment of POME requires a sound and

efficient system in facing the current challenges.
With the present situation where there are some
mills still failing to comply with the DOE
standard discharge limit even after they have
applied the available treatment system, it is
believed that membrane separation technology
will be able to treat POME in a more beneficial
way. This technology is increasingly being used
for treating wastewater. Several advantages in
using membranes are: its wide applicability
across a wide range of industries, the quality of
the treated water is more uniform regardless of
the influent variations, it can be used in-process
to allow recycling of selected waste stream
within a plant and the plant can be highly
automated and does not require highly skilled
operators [6].
Worldwide there are a number of studies that
have been conducted for treating various types
ofwastewater by using membrane technology for
the purpose of recovery and recycling of water.
Afonso and Borquez [7] studied microfiltration
(MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) membranes to treat
wastewater from fishmeal production. They
succeeded in recycling the water for plant use as
well as recycle protein into fishmeal process.
Mavrov and Belieres [8] carried out their
research on recovery and recycling of water from
food industry wastewater using nanofiltration
(NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) combined with
cartridge filtration and UV disinfection as a pretreatment. The combination of biological treatment with UF, NF and RO membranes in treating
municipal wastewater was also studied by
Rautenbach et al. [9] where 97% water recovery
was achieved.
Membrane separation technology for treating
POME has never been applied on an industrial
scale due to POME characteristics, e.g., membrane processes have some limitations in dealing
with the high suspended solids effluent. The
membranes will suffer from fouling and degradation during use. However, several approaches

89

to mitigate this problem have been attempted,

among them the use of vibratory or centrifugal
devices to enhance shear at the membrane surface
to decrease concentration polarization, modification of membrane surfaces to increase hydrophilicity and pretreatment of feed [ 10,11 ].
In the pretreatment of feed, coagulation and
adsorption permit removal of organic colloids
that play an important role in fouling phenomena.
Coagulation is a term used to describe the
process of aggregation of colloidal particles into
large aggregates. Aggregation of particles occurs
by two distinct mechanisms: particle transport to
affect interparticle contact, and particle destabilization to permit attachment when contact occurs,
AI-Malack and Anderson [12] have shown the
effect of using alum, polyaluminium silicate
(PASS), and lime as coagulants on the performance of cross-flow MF of domestic wastewater.
The coagulants were added to the circulation tank
at the beginning of each run. Doses of 20 to
120 mg/l of alum were used at pH 7. The results
showed a 50% improvement in flux values with
regards to direct filtration with-out coagulants.
Seo et al. [13] reported the coupling of
biological powder activated carbon (BPAC)-MF
for wastewater reclamation and reuse. The average organic removal efficiency was 83% from
initial concentration of the effluent, equal to
9.8 mg/1 total organic carbon (TOC). Vigneswaran et al. [14] showed that cross flow MF with
in-line flocculation reduced the clogging of the
membranes, thus leading to high-quality product
water at an economic filtration rate. The filtration
rate can be increased by more than 200% by
adopting in-line flocculation.
For adsorption, granular activated carbon
(GAC) is commonly used for removing organic
constituents and residual disinfectants in wastewater treatment. Besides improving taste, colour
and minimizing health hazards, it also protects
other water treatment units such as UF and RO
membranes from possible damage due to organic
fouling. Activated carbon is a favored water

90

A.L. Ahmad et al. / Desalination 157 (2003) 87-95

treatment technique because of its multifunctional nature and the fact that it adds nothing
detrimental to the treated water [15].
In the current research a new approach in
treating POME is being studied. A pilot plant
was designed and constructed which integrates
pretreatment methods and membrane technology
(UF and RO) to treat POME. Another purpose of
this research is to recover the treated water to be
recycled for internal plant usage such as boiler
feed water for the sterilization processes of fresh
fruit bunches, water for clarification of the extracted crude palm oil or water for hydrocyclone
separation of the cracked mixture of kernels and
shells. The pre-treatment process is necessary to
remove the high content of suspended solids and
oil in POME that would otherwise severely foul
the membrane and lead to a shorter membrane
life.
The pretreatment processes consist of two
stages of chemical treatment and activated carbon
treatment; for membrane separation treatment,
UF and RO membranes are used to refine the
treated water further. A simplified flow diagram
of the process is shown in Fig. 1.
After this membrane separation treatment
system, the product is suitable for recycling
purposes, especially for boiler feed water. Fig. 2
shows the possibility of water recycling in an
average palm oil mill of 30 tonnes of fresh fruit
bunches (FFB)/h.

l
Tvdnsf~r
tank

2. Material and methods

2.1. Preliminary test at laboratory scale

A jar test was performed using six beakers

which were filled with 200 ml of POME
collected from the United Palm Oil Mill, Sg.
Kecil Nibong Tebal, and cooled to room temperature. Modified industrial grade alum, Envifloc
40L, and a fiocculation agent, Envifloc 20S,
obtained from Envilab Sdn. Bhd., Penang, were
added at 0.05 v/v and 0.015 v/v, respectively, and
this mixture was flocculated uniformly using
paddle at 150 rpm for 2 min for the rapid mixing
and at 50 rpm for 30 min for the slow mixing at
pH 5.5. The mixture was left to settle for 2 h.
Then the turbidity value of the supernatant was
recorded using a turbidimeter. This turbidity
value will represent the suspended solids concentration in the treated waste. The percentage of
supematant was also identified after 2 h of sedimentation. Few parameters were varied in
identifying the best combination as the guidelines

.3

-3

Raw POME

The objective of this study is to investigate the

performance of each process treatment in the
reduction of turbidity, chemical oxygen demand
(COD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD)
for the treatment of POME based on membrane
technology to recycle water from the treated
POME back to the plant.

| st

2 nd

Chemical
treatment
tank

Chemical
treatment
tank

UF
Feed
Tank

POME

o
P2

Fig. 1. Diagram of the pilot plant for POME treatment.

....
Treated

V3

P1

I't

P3

P4

-C>

A.L. A hmad e t al. / Desalination 157 (2003) 87-95

for pilot plant use where pH was 4.5-9; coagulant dosage, 0.01-0.075 v/v; and flocculant
dosage, 0-0.025 v/v.
2.2. Pilot plant experimental set-up

A pilot plant for POME treatment based on

membrane separation technology has been
designed and built locally and is currently
available for research studies. The 500-L
capacity pilot plant carries out the two main
treatment stages: pre-treatment and membrane
separation.
The supernatant for the raw POME was
transferred to the first chemical treatment tank
for the coagulation, flocculation and sedimentation process. Modified industrial-grade alum,
Envifloc 40L, and flocculation agent, Envifloc
20S, were added at a dosage of 0.05 v/v and
0.015 v/v, respectively. The pH value was
adjusted between 5.5 to 6.5 with NaOH. The
mixing speed was set at 50 rpm for 60 rain (parameters obtained from the preliminary test
conducted using a jar). After mixing, it was left
for the sedimentation process. Two stages of the
coagulation and sedimentation process were
carried out whereby the supernatant from the first
chemical treatment was pumped to the second
chemical treatment tank and further coagulation
and sedimentation were carried out. In the second
chemical treatment only modified alum was used
with a dosage of 0.006 v/v, pH at 5.5-6.5, and a
50 rpm mixing rate for 30 min of mixing time
and another 2 h for the sedimentation process.
30 - 45
Tonnes of
Water/hr

"1

14 - 29
Tonnes
Water/hr

The treated POME was later fed through a fixed

bed of activated carbon for the adsorption
process. Granular activated carbon from palm
kernel shell bases With a mesh value of 8x30 was
packed inside the perspex column (250 mm
diameter x 1300 mm height) for removing
organic matter, colour and odour. The flowrate
was kept constant at 4 L/min.
The pretreated POME was then pumped to a
ceramic UF membrane. This UF membrane
system was designed with a total membrane area
of 0.36 m z with a pore size of 0.5-1.0 micron and
an operating pressure of 0-7 bar. Lastly, UF
permeate was fed into the RO membrane module
where the completely treated POME or RO
permeate was produced. This TFC-type tubular
RO membrane has an o f MWCO 99.9% NaC1
retention, 0.9 m 2 membrane area and operatees at
a pressure of 0-60 bar.
A flux study is also being carried out where
pressure was varies from 1 to 4.5 bar for UF and
10 to 50 bars for RO to see the increment in
permeate flux with various transmembrane
pressures. A similar test using tap water was
carried out for the UF and RO membranes as a
comparison to observe the flux reduction
phenomenon.
The analysis for turbidity, chemical oxygen
demand (COD) and biochemical oxygen demand
(BOD) in all sampling points were carried out to
see the performance o f each process in the
removal of suspended solids and organic matter.
The sampling pgints are indicated in Fig. 3.

-1

91

30 Tonnes FFB/hr

19.5 Tonnes of POME/hr

85 % water
recovery
16 Tonnes of Water/hr

Fig. 2. Proposed water cycling activities.

A.L. Ahmad et al. / Desalination 157 (2003) 87-95

92

RAW
POME

Chemical
treatment

Chemical
treatment

Carbon
treatment

I I
4] uF

treatment

Treated
treatment-'"~POME
6

Fig. 3. Samplingpoints. 1 raw POME,2 afterfirst chemicaltreatment,3 aftersecondchemicaltreatment,4 afteractivated

carbon treatment, 5 after UF treatment,6 afterRO treatment.

2.3 COD analysis

OD is an indication of the overall oxygen load
that a wastewater will impose on an effluent
stream. COD is equal to the amount of dissolved
oxygen that a sample will absorb from a hot
acidic solution containing potassium dichromate
and mercuric ions. The apparatus used in this
study was PCcheckit COD vario (Lovibond,
Germany) that consists of a PCcheckit COD
vario photometer and COD reactor ET 108. In a
vial, a 2 ml sample was put into contact with the
oxidizing acid solution that was then held at
148C for 2 h. After cooling, the sample was then
analysed in the PCcheckit COD vario photometer. The colour of the sample varied from
orange to dark green indicating COD strength in
the range of 0-15,000 mg/L.

2.4. BOD analysis

The BOD ofwastewater expresses the amount
of oxygen used by biodegradable organic substances. In this case, the Lovibond BOD IRSensomat consists of an IR-pressure sensor acting
as the measurement device, BOD-Sensomat and
stirring system. A selected sample volume was
collected in a 500 ml BOD flask. Organic substances in the sample which are capable of
biological decomposition were oxidized microbially by oxygen (02). The resultant carbon
dioxide (CO2) is absorbed with potassium
hydroxide (KOH), which creates a decrease of
the air pressure in the measurement system that is
proportional to the BOD. This was detected by

the IR-sensor, logged into the BOD-Sensomat

and converted directly in mg/L of BOD.

2.5. Other analysis

Turbidity was measured with the help o f the
calibrated WTW Turb 350IRturbidity meter. The
pH was measured using a Mettler Toledo 320 pH
meter.
3. Results and discussion

3.1. Preliminary test, laboratory scale

From results in Table 2, it was observed that
by increasing the pH from 4.5 to 9, the supernatant recovery was found to decrease; there was
a similar trend for turbidity whereby increasing
the pH, the turbidity value continued to reduce.
Increasing the coagulant dosage also contributed
an effect to the reduction in turbidity value which
indicates that less suspended solids content in the
supematant can be produced by adding more
coagulant. Even though the turbidity value of
supernatant at pH 9 was found to be less than
1000 NTU after adding 0.02 v/v and more of
coagulant dosage, the sludge generated, however,
was higher and the supernatant could not serve
the purpose of recovering water from POME. It
was proposed that higher supematant recovery
(>45%) and lower suspended solids content with
a turbidity value less than 1000 NTU were
required for the next stage of pilot plant test in
order to achieve the purpose of the current
research to recycle the water from treated POME.

93

A.L. Ahmad et al. / Desalination 157 (2003) 87-95

Table 2
Tabulated results for preliminary test (no flocculation
dosage)

80

800

6O

500

50

pH

Coagul~ion
dosage(v/v)

Supern~ant
recovery(%)

Turbidity
(NTU)

4.5

0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
0.075
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
0.075
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
0.075
0.01
0.02
0.03
0.04
0.05
0.075

65.2
64.8
58.0
57.0
56.4
52.8
57.4
46.5
44.4
44.0
45.9
43.9
53.0
44.5
45
42.4
44.6
43.1
36
16.5
16.5
16.5
18
24

1444
1169
1062
1122
1171
1287
2239
1057
1053
1023
846
741
2926
1172
1091
1022
831
704
2926
972
709
690
635
604

,~ 4o
,e_.,.3o

400
1-

5.5

6.5

The effect of adding the flocculation agent is

shown in Fig. 4, where it was found that by
introducing a flocculant agent, the amount o f
water recovery slightly increased while the turbidity value was reduced. This phenomenon
clearly shows that the flocculation agent helps in
the coagulation and flocculation process in the jar
test. By adding a dosage of 0.015 v/v of
flocculant, the supernatant recovery increased by
more than 20% while the turbidity value was
reduced to less than 700 NTU. Therefore, to
achieve the pretreatment objective, which is to
get higher water recovery with a low turbidity
value, it was decided to select the following set

20

L?'

I0

I Supernatant (%L

200

- ' = ~ l " ~ T u r bidit Y

. . . . .
0.005

~iil]~i/T

0.01

0.015

1 ~
0.02

o
0,025

Flocculation dosage (pal)

Fig. 4. Effect of flocculation dosage to turbidity and

supernatant percentage.
Table 3
Pilot plant analysis results
Sample

1
2
3
4
5
6

Parameter
Turbidity
(NTU)

COD
(mg/L)

BOD
(mg/L)

10,563
3,012
318
190
1.17
0.81

26,107
16,967
13,883
11,460
7,835
314

15,800
6,320
4,920
4,570
1,752
91

of parameter that are coagulation dosage of

0.05 v/v, flocculation dosage o f 0.015 v/v at the
range of pH 5.5 to 6.5 that will be used for the
pilot plant test while a mixing speed of 50 rpm
for 30 min and sedimentation time of 2 h were
maintained.
3.2. Pilot plant test

The turbidity, COD and BOD analysis at

different stages of processing were carried out
and the results illustrated in Table 3 are the
average from reproducibility data of three tests.
From the tabulated results, it was shown that
the pretreatment processes that include two
stages of chemical treatment and activated carbon

94

A.L. Ahmad et aL / Desalination 157 (2003) 87-95

treatment played a significant role in reducing

POME turbidity by almost 97.9%. This directly
implies that the suspended solids content in the
pretreated POME has been removed as preparation before it enters the membrane treatment
stage. The mitigation approach by applying
chemical treatment and activated carbon as a
pretreatment process enables reducing membrane
fouling and degradation during use.
The odour and colour of pretreated POME
after activated carbon treatment were significantly different before being treated, where it was
found to be odourless, and the colour turned light
yellow. The turbidity of POME after undergoing
UF membrane treatment was further reduced,
more than 99% of its value from pretreated
POME. The final treatment with the RO membrane produced crystal clear water with a turbidity of less than 1 NTU, as required for
standard drinking water. The turbidity tests were
also conducted on tap water, distilled water and
deionized water, and the results were 0.32, 0.01
and 0.15 NTU, respectively.
The performance of COD shows the reduction
by 35% after the first chemical treatment, further
reduced to 46.8% in second chemical treatment;
the activated carbon treatment brought down the
COD value to 56% from the original COD value
of raw POME. However, after undergoing the UF
and RO membrane treatment, it was evident that
the RO membrane could drastically reduce the
COD concentration to a value of 96% of that
attained after the UF membrane.
For BOD reduction, a similar trend to the
COD reduction was obtained from each treatment
process, as illustrated in Fig. 5. However, it can
be seen that pretreatment process reduced the
BOD percentage to more than 70%, and both
membranes play an important role in reducing the
BOD value further to 99.4% or 91 mg/L, which
is below the allowable limit set by the Malaysian
Department of Environment, which is 100 mg/L.
There were slight reductions in average flux
for both membranes after cleaning procedures

100
'~\
80 \,~, \

&
oo

#
Turbidity
- - I , - - - COD

',"

-..--Boo

40
20

Sampling point

Fig. 5. Analysis results for each sampling point.

were being applied. Average flux for UF before

the POME filtration process was 930.25 L/mZ.h
and after cleaning, the flux was reduced to
883.61 L/mZ.h. For the RO membrane, the average flux before filtration was 106.53 L/m2.h and
after cleaning was 105.02 L/mZ.h.
4. Conclusion

The purpose of this research was to study the

performance in terms of turbidity, COD and BOD
for each treatment process, consisting of two
stages of chemical treatments and adsorption
process by granular activated carbon treatment as
a pretreatment process while UF and RO
membranes were used for membrane separation
treatment. From the results it is evident that the
pretreatment process was able to remove organic
matter and suspended solids in POME by 97.9%
with a turbidity of 56% in COD and 71% in
BOD. The promising results from the pretreatment process will reduce the membrane
fouling phenomenon and degradation in flux. For
the membrane separation treatment, the turbidity
value was reduced to almost 100%, with a 98.8%
reduction in COD and 99.4% BOD reduction.
Cleaning procedures were applied to ensure that

A.L. Ahmad et al. /Desalination 157 (2003) 87-95

flux and pressure retumed to the original values

after each treatment. In addition, the treated
POME discharge using this membrane treatment
technology is in compliance with standard discharge regulations; the high-quality treated water
can be recycled back to the plant for internal
usage such as boiler feed water for sterilization
of fresh fruit bunch processing, water for
clarification of the extracted crude palm oil or
water for hydrocyclone separation of mixture o f
cracked kernels and shells.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to gratefully
acknowledge Yayasan Felda for their financial
support for this research. The authors would also
like to thank United Oil Palm Industry, Nibong
Tebal, Pulau Pinang, for providing the sample o f
POME to conduct this research.

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95

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