Cultivating microalgae on palm oil mill effluent for value-added products | Azimatun Nur

Summary

South East Asia dominates the production of palm oil worldwide. During the traditional processing, palm oil mill effluent (POME) wastewater is generated which causes serious environmental problems. The utilization of microalgae to treat wastewater was introduced recently because of the advantages to lower nutrient content (COD, nitrogen, phosphorus) while the biomass can be utilized as bulk biomass or value added product such as pigments (fucoxantyin, chlorophyll) carbohydrates, proteins, or long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (LC-PUFA). However, the utilization of microalgae cultivated in POME medium for value added product was not well explored.

The purpose of this project is to fill the gaps in this knowledge by investigating several parameters to optimize the utilization of POME wastewater as medium source of microalgae, as well as producing the value added product from various microalgal species.

This project is funded by Indonesia Scholarship Endowment Fund (LPDP), Ministry of Finance, Republic of Indonesia.