Palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment “Microbial communities in an anaerobic digester”: A Review.

Abstract

Industrialization is vital to a nation’s socio – economic development. It provides ready employment opportunities for a good percentage of the population. Although industrialization is inevitable, various devastating ecological and human disasters which have continuously occurred, implicate industries such as palm oil industry as major contributors to pollution problems and environmental degradation of various magnitude. As a result environmental problems have increased in geometric proportion over the last three decades with improper practices being largely responsible for the gross pollution of the aquatic environment with concomitant increase in waterborne diseases. Pollution of the environment with palm oil mill effluent (POME) is generated during palm oil processing which is carried out in mills where oil is extracted from the palm fruits. Large quantities of water are used during extraction of crude palm oil from the fresh fruits and about 50% of the water results in palm oil mill effluent. Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is an important source of inland water pollution when released into local rivers or lakes without treatment because it is a highly polluted wastewater that pollutes the environment if discharged directly due to its high chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) concentration. Anaerobic digestion treatment of palm oil mill effluent has been considered to have a number of advantages over the conventional aerobic process. It saves the energy needed for aeration, converts organic pollutants into methane gas, a readily useable fuel, needs low nutrient requirement and produces low biomass. This technology in recent years has been applied for the treatment of many high-strength industrial wastewaters. This review discusses the various ongoing anaerobic digestion treatment of POME including their advantages and disadvantages, other related treatment technologies currently practice in palm oil mill industries, the potential of using the molecular biology techniques to provide detailed profile of the microbial community structure and establish the phylogenetics of microorganisms in bioreactors used for POME treatment and given insight into the microbial communities of wastewaters using the modern molecular biology techniques including their merits and demerits with emphasis on biological wastewater treatment processes that exploit an environment devoid of oxygen, inhibition of methanogenesis including anaerobic process and the potential uses and utilization of POME.`