POME is one of the strongest industrial effluents in regular commercial use, and the mills that treat it are usually hot, remote and short of land. That combination is what makes a compact biological stage with a large protected surface attractive.
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| De-oiling and cooling | No media. POME arrives hot and fatty; the de-oiling and buffer ponds do the work that keeps everything downstream alive |
| Anaerobic ponds or tank | No media in the classic pond system; tank digesters use mixing, not biofilm carriers |
| Aerobic or facultative polishing | This is where moving bed carriers earn their place: the remaining load is dilute, the pond is the land constraint, and the surface area per cubic metre decides the footprint |
| Final solids | Lamella settling media where discharge to a river is monitored and the mill has no more land |
Our published carrier data holds in the tropics without modification: the working range is 5–60 °C, so ambient POME polishing sits comfortably inside it, and HDPE is unaffected by the effluent chemistry. The published figures a mill needs are the same ones any plant uses:
| Specific surface | Over 800 to over 1000 m²/m³ depending on grade |
| Void fraction | 85–90 % |
| Fill fraction | 15–67 % of reactor volume |
| Organic oxidation | 2000–15000 g/m³·d |
| Biofilm development | 3–15 days |
| Service life | Published beyond 15 years |
The practical constraint in most mills is not the biology, it is the aeration: a moving bed polishing stage needs diffusers, air pipe and a blower that the mill may not have. We specify the carriers, the disc aerators and the ABS air pipe together so the retrofit is one scope rather than three suppliers blaming each other.
Projects in this sector are usually mill-owned retrofits rather than consultant-led tenders, which changes what the enquiry looks like: pond volumes as built (not as designed), the mill throughput in tonnes of FFB, the current discharge consent and the land available are more useful than a specification document. We quote against those and state clearly which stage the media is for.
Products: MBBR carriers · disc aerators · ABS air pipe · settling media · market notes: South-East Asia and Africa · industries: all applications.
No. The anaerobic stage is a retention volume and mixing duty; carriers do not change the digestion capacity of a pond. What carriers can do is take the load off the aerobic polishing stage and let a mill meet consent in a smaller footprint than additional ponds would need.
Not the material - HDPE is unaffected and the published working range is 5-60 degrees C. It changes the biology: warmer effluent means faster kinetics, and it changes the aeration design, which is usually the real constraint in a mill retrofit.
Mill throughput in tonnes of FFB, the pond volumes as built, the current discharge consent, the land available and the aeration equipment already installed. Those five answers produce a specification; a generic request for a price does not.
Yes - carriers, disc aerators and ABS air pipe are specified as one scope, because a moving bed stage that is short of air looks exactly like a stage that is short of media, and separating the two purchases makes that ambiguity permanent.
We specify the polishing stage as media plus aeration, and say plainly where carriers do not belong.
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