Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME)
Large quantities of water are used during the crude oil extraction process. About 1 - 1.5 cubic meters of water are used to process one tonne of FFB. From this quantity, about 50% of the water results in the POME, the other 50% being lost as steam, mainly through sterilizer exhaust, piping leakages, as well as wash waters.
POME comprises a combination of the wastewaters which are principally generated and discharged from the following mill processing operation as below:
- Sterilization of FFB - sterilizer condensate is about 36% of total POME
- Clarification of the extracted CPO - clarification wastewater is about 60% of total POME
- Hydrocyclone separation of cracked mixture of kernel and shell-hydrocyclone wastewater is about 4% of total POME
There are other minor sources of relatively clean wastewater that may be included in the combined mill effluent POME which is sent to the wastewater stream. These include turbine cooling water and steam condensates, boiler blow-downs, overflows from the vacuum dryers and some floor washings. The volume of the combined POME discharged depends on the milling operation efficiency.