Development of Anaerobic Digestion of Palm Oil Mill Effluent With Heated Recycle Sludge

In palm oil production, a factory will also generate various wastes, one of them is a liquid waste in large quantities. This liquid waste is quite harmful to the environment around the mill. Therefore, it is necessary to handle this waste seriously. The purpose of this research is to comparatively determine performance and stability of anaerobic fermentation of palm oil mill effluent with heated recycle sludge at various temperatures i.e. 27 -28 (room temperature), 70 and 80 o C. Fresh POME of Aceh Tamiang Palm Oil Factory without additional treatment was fed into the bioreactor. A 2 L-continuous mixed tank bioreactor was operated at 55 o C, closed systems, and intermittent. The hydraulic retention time of all experiments was kept at 10 days. The result concluded that heated recycle sludge significantly affected the performance of the bioreactor mainly on biogas production, TS, and VS, VS degradation rate and COD removal. VS degradation rate could be reached to 70%, COD degradation rate of 84% and 0.78 NL/day of gas generation at a similar temperature (70 o C) of heated recycle sludge.