Journal of Water Resource and Protection, 2013, 5, 18-27 doi:10.4236/jwarp.2013.57A004 Published Online July 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jwarp) A Study on Zeolite Performance in Waste Treating Ponds for Treatment of Palm Oil Mill Effluent M. Halim Shah Ismail * , Shazryenna Dalang, Syafiie Syam, Shamsul Izhar Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Malaysia Email: * mshalim@eng.upm.edu.my Received April 27, 2013; revised May 29, 2013; accepted July 4, 2013 Copyright © 2013 M. Halim Shah Ismail et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Oil palm currently occupies the largest acreage of farm land in Malaysia. In 2011, the production of palm oil in Malay- sia was recorded as 19.8 million tons which has led to a huge amount of wastewater known as palm oil mill effluent (POME). This work focuses on the ponding system which acts as wastewater treatment plant in order to treat POME. The conventional ponding system applied in mills consists of a series of seven ponds. The maintenance costs of the pond are expensive thus study of alternative methods is needed. POME treatment using zeolite shows a potential to overcome the problem. Samples collected from selected ponds are tested and analyzed using water analyzer method. Result from adsorption by zeolite shows a significant reduction of COD, BOD, Fe, Zn, Mn and turbidity. This shows that zeolite is highly potential to be applied as adsorbent in the POME treatment plants. The results here may lead to lower maintenance cost, lower quantity of treatment ponds and lesser land occupied for the treatment of POME in Ma- laysia. Keywords: Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME); Zeolite; Wastewater Treatment 1. Introduction Palm oil is one of the world’s most rapidly expanding equatorial crops. Indonesia and Malaysia are the two largest oil palm producing countries and is rich with nu- merous endemic, forest-dwelling species. Malaysia has a tropical climate and is prosperous in natural resources. Oil palm currently occupies the largest acreage of farmed land in Malaysia [1]. Over the recent years, there has been a growing concern about the discharge of oil-con- taining industrial wastewater into the ecosystem. Palm oil processing in Malaysia annually produces a huge amount of wastewater known as palm oil mill effluent (POME). POME is a viscous brown liquid with fine suspended solids at pH ranging between 4 and 5 [2]. Characteristics of POME are tabulated in Table 1. In the process of palm oil milling, POME is generated through steriliza- tion of fresh oil palm fruit bunches, clarification of palm oil and effluent from hydrocyclone operations [3]. It is estimated that about 0.5 - 0.75 tons of POME are dis- charged from the mill for every ton of fresh fruit bunch (FFB) [4]. In Malaysia about 53 million m 3 POME is being produced every year based on palm oil production since 2005. Therefore, the challenge of converting POME into an environmental friendly waste requires an efficient treatment and effective disposal. Ponding systems are easy operating systems but they occupy a vast amount of land mass, relatively long hy- draulic retention time (45 - 60 days) and bad odor. More- over, it is difficult to maintain the liquor distribution and biogas collection which leads to harmful effect on the environment [5,6]. Another major disadvantage of using ponding system is the formation of scum and solids that tend to build up at the bottom of the pond. The sludge and scum will clump together inside the pond lowering the treatment efficiency. Therefore, the system requires regular desludging process by either using submersible pumps or excavators. Since the POME treatment applied at mills consists of seven ponds, the maintenance cost for all the ponds is very costly. Due to these facts, palm oil mills face the challenge of balancing the environmental protection, its economic viability and sustainable devel- opment. There is an urgent necessity to find an approach to preserve the environment while keeping the economy growing. * Corresponding author. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JWARP