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Effect of Sawdust on Natural Ceramic Membrane for Treating Palm Oil Mill
Effluent (POME)
Nur Adilla Che Samsuddin
Supervisor: Dr. Asmadi Ali @ Mahmud
Bachelor of Technology (Environment)
School of Ocean Engineering
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu
Wastewater treatment facility is the most important component in a palm oil mill
system. However, untreated palm oil mill effluents (POME) are normally being
discharged to the river and it leads to water pollution. Therefore, this study was
performed to produce high performance ceramic membrane for treating POME. The
ceramic membrane which was made of clay and sawdust was sintered at 1000˚C for
2 hours by using slip casting method. Ceramic membrane with the best performance
was obtained from combination of clay with 20% sawdust. In addition, it was observed
that as both density and mechanical strength of the produced ceramic membrane
decreased, the permeability and porosity have inversely increased. The efficiency of
natural ceramic membrane to remove the turbidity of POME is 37.77%. However, the
POME removal efficiency shown by this low cost natural ceramic membrane is
relatively low as compared to existing ultrafiltration membranes.
63 | U M T U N D E R G R A D U A T E R E S E A R C H D A Y 2019