Evaluating Fertilizer-Drawn Forward Osmosis Performance in Treating Anaerobic Palm Oil Mill Effluent

Fertilizer-drawn forward osmosis (FDFO) is a potential alternative to recover and reuse water and nutrients from agricultural wastewater, such as palm oil mill effluent that consists of 95% water and is rich in nutrients. This study investigated the potential of commercial fertilizers as draw solution (DS) in FDFO to treat anaerobic palm oil mill effluent (An-POME). The process parameters affecting FO were studied and optimized, which were then applied to fertilizer selection based on FO performance and fouling propensity. Six commonly used fertilizers were screened and assessed in terms of pure water flux (Jw) and reverse salt flux (JS). Ammonium sulfate ((NH4)2SO4), mono-ammonium phosphate (MAP), and potassium chloride (KCl) were further evaluated with An-POME. MAP showed the best performance against An-POME, with a high average water flux, low flux decline, the highest performance ratio (PR), and highest water recovery of 5.9% for a 4-h operation. In a 24-h fouling run, the average flux decline and water recovered were 84% and 15%, respectively. Both hydraulic flushing and osmotic backwashing cleaning were able to effectively restore the water flux. The results demonstrated that FDFO using commercial fertilizers has the potential for the treatment of An-POME for water recovery. Nevertheless, further investigation is needed to address challenges such as JS and the dilution factor of DS for direct use of fertigation

Study of machines performance in producing different sizes of grated sago

Sago starch is a product from sago palm. In order to extract the sago starch, certain process is needed to break the bonding of the pith either mechanically or manually by grating the pith into small sizes. Water is widely used as a solvent medium in the extraction process of sago starch. The more refined that grated sago, the more sago starch can be dissolved from the grated sago. Different machines were used to produce grated sago for machine capability test. The machines are handheld chainsaw, coconut husk decorticator, commercial coconut grater and in-house roller grating prototype. Sago palm trunk was cut into three parts with length of 50 cm long each. The outer layer of each sago palm trunks was peeled off and split into 8 pieces. All sago trunks were grated using four different machines as stated above. Each 100 gram of the grated sago trunk produced by each machine were sifted according to the grading size of 2.80 mm, 2.00 mm, 1.00 mm, 0.85 mm and 0.425 mm. The weights of sago starch from the sieving process were recorded according to their respected grading size. Based on results of the sieve experiments, the most finest grated sago trunk was produced from the handheld chainsaw with a weight percentage ratio of 13.028% (X < 0.3 mm), 10.682% (0.3 ≤ X < 0.425 mm), 28.361% (0.425 ≤ X <0.85 mm), 28.821% (0.85 ≤ X <1.0 mm), 4.728% (1.0 ≤ X <2.0 mm), 7.877% (2.0 ≤ X <2.8 mm), and 4.868% (X ≥2.8 mm) where X value refer to sieve mesh size