Comparison of wastewater treatment using activated carbon from bamboo and oil palm: an overview

Developing country causes growth of industries sectors. Despite that industrial
sectors releases massive amount of waste water into the environment. At the
same time, the increasing number of vehicles in Malaysia promotes the
development of automobile workshop that produces huge amount of wastewater
as well. Wastewater contains high level of suspended total solids and leave
untreated. For instance oil, grease, dyestuff, chromium, phosphate in washing
products and colouring, as well as heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, barium
and others potential metals. All these hazardous wastes directly pollute the
environment especially the groundwater and harm the ecosystem. In order to
minimize and reduce the impact to the environment, the wastewater needed to
be treated using technology such as permeable reactive barrier (PRB). Activated
carbon is one of the PRB utilised. It is a compromised material for treatment of
wastewater where there are varieties of sources to produce activated carbon.
Malaysia as an active agricultural country, massive amount of agriculture wastes
can be turned into activated carbon. They are two methods used to produce
activated carbon, namely furnace heat processing and microwave processing.
The usage of furnace and microwave instruments can produce different quality
of activated carbon due to different mechanism involves. Furnace heat
processing transferred the heat from external to the internal but microwave
processing is vice versa. In this article, a brief overview of activated carbon
usage for wastewater treatment is highlighted.