A wide range of approaches for the treatment of POME have
been developed to alleviate the pollution problems caused by the
palm oil industry. The most frequently used method is biological
treatment, which consist of anaerobic and facultative pond
systems. While anaerobic pond is one of the most common treatments
adopted in Malaysia to treat highly concentrated POME,
anaerobic treatment of POME alone could hardly produce effluents
to a level complying with the DOE discharge limit. The reported
results shown in Tables 1 and 2 clearly indicated that the anaerobically
digested POME still contains high COD and BOD concentrations.
It is essential to subject the effluents to an appropriate
post-treatment before discharging in order to meet regulatory
limits. Since anaerobically digested POME is amenable to aerobic
treatment based on its physical composition, primary treatment of
POME through anaerobic treatment and subsequent post-treatment
of aerobic treatment appears to be the most technoeconomically
viable approach.