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Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) is able to produce greenhouse gas and cause environmental problems if it is not managed properly. Anaerobic digestion is an outstanding method which has been proven to effectively manage this waste. However, due to the difference in growth parameters and biological kinetics of the various microorganisms in metabolic pathways, then anaerobic digestion process could be carried out in two-stage anaerobic digestion (TSAD), namely hydrolysis-acidogenesis and methanogenesis stages. TSAD has been proven to produce hydrogen-enriched biogas (10–30% v/v) with a profitable process. It showed better overall degradation rates and better biogas quality than the single stage. Hydrolysis-acidogenesis step produces hydrogen. It is a promising future energy carrier for sustainable green energy production because of its clean and non-polluting characteristics, being renewable, higher efficiency of conversion in power generation, and high density. This study focuses on the hydrolysis-acidogenesis, with hydrogen and carbon dioxide as gas products. This study aims to evaluate the preliminary production of biohydrogen in the hydrolysis-acidogenesis process by using POME. The biohydrogen quality was investigated by using stirred tank reactor under adjusted pH and temperature. The test was carried out using a stirred reactor with a capacity of 2.5 liter. POME and inoculum were fed into the reactor and then purged with argon gas to remove oxygen gas. The process was maintained at temperature of 35oC and pH of 5.5. Based on the biogas production, it was found that the hydrogen production at hydrolysis-acidogenesis was 32% and zero amount of methane gas. This theory is the basic for research in multi-stage reactors, that the optimization of hydrogen gas production in hydrolysis and acidogenesis reaction can produce better biohydrogen formation in terms of quality. The results of this preliminary study can be used as a reference for further studies in producing optimum hydrogen in a stirred anaerobic reactor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The utilization of Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) to produce biogas in Indonesia is very potential since the production of palm oil in Indonesia is one of the highest in the world. In 2021, about 28.7 million liter of POME produced as a wastewater from palm oil plant. The production of biogas from POME can be done through fermentation. The fermentation process of biogas from POME needs an inoculum as the population of microorganisms and POME as a fermentation medium. This process involves many microorganisms that are sensitive to the changes of the operating parameter so it is important to find the optimum condition for the biogas production. Some of the parameters that affect the production of biogas are inoculum composition, pH, the addition of nutrients, and the Hydraulic Retention Time (HRT) of the substrate. This research used POME as substrate, cow dung as the inoculum, sodium hydroxide as pH controller, and urea as the nutrients that are fed into a 250 ml fermentor in a room temperature. The inoculum composition, pH, and composition of nutrients are varied. The fermentor was operated for 30 days and the gas produced from the fermentor was analyzed using GC-TCD every 10 days to discover the methane production. The results showed that the highest methane composition (52.7%) were obtained from the fermentor with the composition of 30% volume of inoculum: 70% volume of POME with pH adjusted to 7 and the nutrient addition for 1000 ppm for HRT 30 days. The result of this research can be used as the consideration in scaling up the biogas fermentation from POME to the larger fermentor capacity in future study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the leading producers of crude palm oil (CPO) worldwide is Indonesia, with 44.5 million tons of CPO produced in 2021, resulting in the production of 28.7 million liters of Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME). Given that POME has the capacity to emit 510 kg of CO2 equivalent per ton of material, its use can be advantageous to the environment, particularly through the elimination of CH4. One of the applications for POME is the production of volatile fatty acids (VFA). Among the subgroup of fatty acids known as VFA are acetic, propionic, iso-butyric, butyric, iso-valeric, and valeric acids. They have two to five carbon atoms. Chemicals, medicines, food, and agriculture are just a few of the many industries that employ VFA. The manufacture of VFA is currently reliant on petrochemicals, however, due to environmental concerns, the switch to anaerobic fermentation will become more intriguing and necessary. Due to the availability of a plentiful supply of feedstock, the high local demand, and the high cost of VFA products, the usage of bio-based VFA from POME truly has a lot of potential and potential. Major challenges to producing VFA from POME still include maintaining the feedstock's quality and the anaerobic digestion process, the low production yield, and the challenging purification procedure. Despite the fact that additional research is required to boost the viability of VFA manufacturing from POME, the enormous potential of POME could ensure the supply of raw materials for VFA manufacture. throughout the long run, it may promote the use of the circular economy concept, particularly throughout the overall business of Indonesia's palm oil industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of hydraulic retention time (HRT) on treating domestic wastewater of Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) was investigated in the pilot plant bio-continuous stirred tank reactor (Bio-CSTR) 1 m3. The bio-CSTR was operated at mesophilic condition and under two HRT conditions (33.3 days and 100 days) aimed to evaluate biogas productivity and operational stability. The pilot plant system was started with cow manure in the beginning, and its combination of POME, cow manure, and urea-DAP as micro nutrition in the first week. Afterward feeding of fresh POME was set between pH 5.4 and 5.5 by mixed it with overflow and further adjusted it with commercial ash soda. The performance observation shows that at shorter HRT, the organic compound was not consumed optimally. This was indicated by low pH 5.1 at the bio CSTR system and the amount biogas produced reached 54.3 L. In addition, it was needed more amount of ash soda to adjust the feeding. Setting by extending the HRT was gradually increased the pH so that needed less ash soda to adjust the pH. The biogas produced was increased 11.3 times higher than that of biogas at short HRT. The effectiveness of POME usage was got by the more organic compound was decomposed that indicated by lower COD analyzed at overflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of hydraulic retention time (HRT) on treating domestic wastewater of Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) was investigated in the pilot plant bio-continuous stirred tank reactor (Bio-CSTR) 1 m3. The bio-CSTR was operated at mesophilic condition and under two HRT conditions (33.3 days and 100 days) aimed to evaluate biogas productivity and operational stability. The pilot plant system was started with cow manure in the beginning, and its combination of POME, cow manure, and urea-DAP as micro nutrition in the first week. Afterward feeding of fresh POME was set between pH 5.4 and 5.5 by mixed it with overflow and further adjusted it with commercial ash soda. The performance observation shows that at shorter HRT, the organic compound was not consumed optimally. This was indicated by low pH 5.1 at the bio CSTR system and the amount biogas produced reached 54.3 L. In addition, it was needed more amount of ash soda to adjust the feeding. Setting by extending the HRT was gradually increased the pH so that needed less ash soda to adjust the pH. The biogas produced was increased 11.3 times higher than that of biogas at short HRT. The effectiveness of POME usage was got by the more organic compound was decomposed that indicated by lower COD analyzed at overflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]