Abstract—The removal of color in anaerobically treated palm oil mill wastewater was investigated. The experiment consisted of two processes including coagulation and advanced oxidation processes. The first process is alum coagulation which was used as a pretreatment. The second process is vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) which was conducted in comparison with ultraviolet (UV)-H2O2. For the coagulation process, the optimum dose of alum and optimum pH were 5 g/L and 5.67, respectively. This condition reduced color (ADMI unit) by 94.88%. For VUV-H2O2 and UV-H2O2 experiments, the effect of H2O2 concentrations (H2O2:COD; 0.5:1, 1:1, 2:1, and 3:1) and VUV/UV power (30W and 60W) were studied. Increasing of H2O2 and VUV/UV power generally resulted in higher reduction of color. This is due to more hydroxyl radical generation. However, in some conditions, increasing of H2O2 acted as hydroxyl radical scavengers that reduced the color removal efficiency. At the end of experiment (180 min), VUV (30W) -H2O2 (H2O2:COD of 2:1) could remove 95.5% of color in ADMI unit.
Index Terms—Anaerobically treated palm oil mill effluent, vacuum ultraviolet, color, hydroxyl radicals.
Thunyalux Ratpukdi is with Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailandand Center of Excellence for Environmental and Hazardous Waste Management, Bangkok 10330, Thailand (e-mail: thunyalux@kku.ac.th).
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Cite: Thunyalux Ratpukdi, "Decolorization of Anaerobically Treated Palm Oil Mill Wastewater Using Combined Coagulation and Vacuum Ultraviolet-Hydrogen Peroxide," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 333-336, 2012.
