Fruit peel biochar for POME treatment

What is it about?

Fruits such as banana and orange are largely consumed in the world which consequently generates a significant amount of fruit peel wastes from the fruit processing industries. Pyrolysis has recently been researched as a promising technique to generate useful products from biomass materials (e.g. fruit wastes, rice straws, microalgaes, oil palm shell). Biochar is a porous and carbon-rich solid product with potentially wide applications. This study demonstrates a promising alternative to divert fruit peels from landfilling by transforming the waste into biochar to treat palm oil mill effluent.

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Why is it important?

The biochar showed good performance in reducing the concentration of BOD, COD, TSS and O&G of POME to an acceptable level below the discharge standard. These suggest that the biochar shows promise to be used as an adsorbent in POME treatment. The recovery of value-added biochar from the pyrolysis of fruit peel shows advantage over traditional landfill approaches and suggests the great potential of pyrolysis as an alternative for the waste management and recovery of fruit peel.