Efficiency of nutrients removal from palm oil mill effluent treatment systems

While most studies concentrate on organic removal from palm oil mill effluent (pome),the resulting nutrient recovery and subsequent removal from the wastewater is infrequently described. although sporadic research has been performed to investigate nutrient removal efficiency of a single technology,the efficacy after combined with other technologies,which usually happened in industrial effluent treatment systems (iets) has not been thoroughly checked. hence,this study assessed the effectiveness of four iets having different technology combination in nutrient removal. nutrients such as total nitrogen (tn),ammoniacal nitrogen (an) and total phosphorus (tp) from pome of these iets were analysed. of the four iets investigated,the combined ponding system,anaerobic digesters and extended aeration coupled with fixed packing in activated sludge aeration tank showed the highest nutrient treatment efficiency (92.5% tn,94.5% an and 93.5% tp). moving forward,pome management should gear towards sustainable recovery of essential nutrients through operative technologies.