Palm Oil Engineering Bulletin No.100 (July - Sept 2011) p11-24
Spray drying palm oil mill effluent
FATAH YAH Abdul Manaf , ANDREW YAP Kian Chung , MENON, N. Ravi

Malaysia produced 16.99 million tonnes of crude palm oil (CPO) in year 2010 and generated about 3.5 t of palm oil mill effluent (POME) for every tonne of CPO produced or about 0.6 t of POME for every tonne of fresh fruit bunched processed. The 1 m3 of POME could generate average 28 m3 of methane gas which is a negative sustainable factor in Life Cycle Analysis if these greenhouse gases are allowed to release into the atmosphere. The Department of Environment proposed to further reduce the biological oxygen demand to 20 ppm under the Malaysian Environmental Quality Act 1974 and Environmental Quality (Prescribed Premises), and the Crude Palm Oil Regulations 1977 for tertiary POME treatment (POME). Meanwhile spray drying is one of the common processes applicable in industrial wastewater treatment plant. This involves use of a heat exchanger in sludge dryers to ensure that it is partly dried before sending it for further processing. The objective of this research work is to carry out preliminary technical feasibility study of spray drying POME generated from mills with clarifier tanks



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