Treatment of Aerobic Treated Palm Oil Mill Effluent (AT-POME) by using TiO2 Photocatalytic Process

Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is one of the major wastewater sources found in Malaysia. Despite the reduction of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) through aerobic or anaerobic biodegradation, the effluent of the treated wastewater (AT-POME) remains dark owing to the degradation of lignocellulosic from the raw POME. In this study, photocatalyst, TiO2 was used to degrade the color pigment that presence in the AT-POME. Besides, different loadings of TiO2 were used to investigate the effect of catalyst loading towards the photodegradation efficiency. The results showed that 10 wt% of TiO2 can remove more than 70% of the color pigment in AT-POME. However, the color reduction only increased slightly when the loading increased from 5 wt% to 10 wt%. This phenomenon occured due to the agglomeration of nanoparticles in the suspension and the excessive of photocatalyst in the suspension that have prevented the penetration of UV irradiation and consequently slowed down the photodegradation.