Fuzzy logic modelling for thermophilic anaerobic digestion of palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment

Treatment of POME has become more challenging with stringent effluent discharge standards and difficulty of current treatment processes to meet the standards due to the complex nature of POME. Utilization of high-rate anaerobic reactor operated under thermophilic condition is proposed for primary POME treatment due to low energy requirements and biogas production that could generate revenue to the industry. However, successful implementation of such system is dependent on the availability of a well-defined model. Hence, fuzzy inference method was employed to model the thermophilic anaerobic digestion of POME. Fuzzy Inference Model (FIM) which utilizes historical data of the reactor condition and digestion performance showed worthy estimation, with an average error and standard deviation of 2.81% and 2.10%; 10.35% and 8.67%; 12.22% and 10.40% for pH, COD and TSS correspondingly.