Wu Ta Yeong, Mohammad Abdul Wahab, Jahim Jamaliah Md, Anuar Nurina
Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.
Biotechnol Adv. 2009 Jan-Feb;27(1):40-52. doi: 10.1016/j.biotechadv.2008.08.005. Epub 2008 Aug 27.
During the last century, a great deal of research and development as well as applications has been devoted to waste. These include waste minimization and treatment, the environmental assessment of waste, minimization of environmental impact, life cycle assessment and others. The major reason for such huge efforts is that waste generation constitutes one of the major environmental problems where production industries are concerned. Until now, an increasing pressure has been put on finding methods of reusing waste, for instance through cleaner production, thus mirroring rapid changes in environmental policies. The palm oil industry is one of the leading industries in Malaysia with a yearly production of more than 13 million tons of crude palm oil and plantations covering 11% of the Malaysian land area. However, the production of such amounts of crude palm oil result in even larger amounts of palm oil mill effluent (POME), estimated at nearly three times the quantity of crude palm oil. Normally, POME is treated using end-of-pipe processes, but it is worth considering the potential value of POME prior to its treatment through introduction of a cleaner production. It is envisaged that POME can be sustainably reused as a fermentation substrate in the production of various metabolites, fertilizers and animal feeds through biotechnological advances. The present paper thus discusses various technically feasible and economically beneficial means of transforming the POME into low or preferably high value added products.
在上个世纪，大量的研发工作以及应用都致力于废弃物处理。这些工作包括废弃物最小化与处理、废弃物的环境评估、环境影响最小化、生命周期评估等。做出如此巨大努力的主要原因在于，就生产行业而言，废弃物产生是主要的环境问题之一。到目前为止，在寻找废弃物再利用方法方面面临着越来越大的压力，例如通过清洁生产，这也反映了环境政策的迅速变化。棕榈油产业是马来西亚的主导产业之一，每年生产超过1300万吨的毛棕榈油，种植园覆盖了马来西亚11%的土地面积。然而，如此大量毛棕榈油的生产导致产生了数量更为庞大的棕榈油厂废水（POME），估计其数量几乎是毛棕榈油的三倍。通常，POME采用末端治理工艺进行处理，但在通过引入清洁生产对其进行处理之前，考虑POME的潜在价值是值得的。据设想，通过生物技术的进步，POME可以作为发酵底物被可持续地再利用，用于生产各种代谢产物、肥料和动物饲料。因此，本文讨论了将POME转化为低附加值或高附加值产品的各种技术上可行且经济上有益的方法。
