Phytoremediation of Palm Oil Mill Effluent Using Pistia Stratiotes Plant and Algae Spirulina sp for Biomass Production

Producing crude palm oil (CPO) generates significant amount of palm oil mill effluent (POME).Besides high COD /BOD contents, POME contains high amount of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphor andmineral). Traditional treatment of POME using facultative anaerobic method do not reduce COD andBOD into allowable limit. The objective of this research was to utilize two stage phytoremediation(water lettuce and algae) to reduce COD, and nutrients in POME with variables of retention times andactivated sludge concentration. The residence time was varied from 1-5 days and activated sludge was in the range of 35-60% vol. The result showed that water lettuce as aquatic plant in the firstremediation process could reduce the COD content up to 39.1-59.66%, absorb nitrogen andphosphorous contents up to 17.73 -30.78%, and 6.14 -18.46%, respectively. At the second remediation process using algae Spirulina , about 90% of nutrients could be absorbed.