PALM OIL MILL EFFLUENT TREATMENT AND BIO-ENERGY GENERATION USING HYBRID MICROBIAL FUEL CELL – ADSORPTION SYSTEM

JUSTINA ROSE, SELVANATHAN (2018) PALM OIL MILL EFFLUENT TREATMENT AND BIO-ENERGY GENERATION USING HYBRID MICROBIAL FUEL CELL – ADSORPTION SYSTEM. [Final Year Project Report] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Palm oil mill effluent (POME) discharged without effective treatment into watercourses can pollute the water source due to its high acidity, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and chemical oxygen demand (COD). As an approach to overcome the limitation of the existing POME treatment methods, a hybrid microbial fuel cell-adsorption (MFC-Adsorption) system is introduced as an innovative and progressive technology that is able to treat wastewater effectively and at the same time generate electricity. However, the bio-energy generated by the system is relatively low which is not practical for industrial application. This study aims to investigate the effects of different types of mediator and pH on the performance of the hybrid MFC-Adsorption system by using POME as the substrate. The viability of the hybrid MFC-Adsorption system in generating bio-energy in the form of voltage, power density and current was investigated. The air-cathode single chamber hybrid MFC-Adsorption system with different types of mediator such as congo red, crystal violet and methylene blue was fabricated and the characterization of POME was conducted using COD, BOD, total suspended solids (TSS), ammoniacal-nitrogen (AN) and turbidity tests to evaluate the efficiency of the hybrid MFC-Adsorption system to treat POME. From this study, 120.58 mV, 168.63 mV and 189.25 mV of voltage was generated in MFCAdsorption system with congo red, crystal violet and methylene blue as mediator, respectively when using 50 Ω external resistances. The current generation of 2.41 mA,3.37 mA and 3.79 mA as well as power generation of 290.79mW/m³, 568.72 mW/m³ and 716.31mW/m³ were produced respectively by the MFC-Adsorption system with these three mediators. Besides, these systems achieved BOD removal of 73.2%, 74.2% and 75.3% while the COD removal up to 84.1%, 84.3% and 84.8% was achieved for the MFCAdsorption system with congo red, crystal violet and methylene blue as mediator, respectively. The TSS removal of 90.8%, 90.77% and 91.5% as well as turbidity removal of 83.3%, 83.3% and 86.1% was obtained, respectively with these three mediators. The maximum AN removal of 21.5% was achieved by MFC-Adsorption system with congo red as the mediator while 22.0% and 23.31% was obtained respectively for system with crystal violet and methylene blue as the mediator. Overall, the MFC-Adsorption system fabricated in this study was feasible to be applied for POME treatment as the effluent concentration was able to comply with the discharge standards imposed by Department of Environment, Malaysia.

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