Non-Woven Fibre Filter Made from Bamboo and Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch for Water Treatment

Water pollution has become an alarming issue over the years in line with the country’s development. This study was conducted to determine the efficiency and characteristics of bamboo fibre and oil palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) fibre as a filter. The bamboo and oil palm EFB were extracted and pressed to produce three types of non-woven fibre filter which are oil palm EFB, bamboo and a combination of bamboo and oil palm EFB. The Scanning Electron Microscopy analysis shows that the oil palm EFB fibre has a rough and porous surface structure while the bamboo fibre has a smooth surface with thick wall characteristics. Energy Dispersive X-ray analysis shows the element composition detected in the oil palm EFB and bamboo are oxygen, carbon, silicon, calcium and potassium. The Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy displays the functional groups found in oil palm EFB fibre are hydroxyl group, carbonyl group and aromatic groups, while the bamboo fibre contains hydroxyl, alkyl and aromatic groups. A filtration experiment was conducted to evaluate the performances of the fibre filters. Results show mixed fibre filter had better performance than other filter with DO concentration of 8.645 mg/L, COD concentration of 1 mg/L, AN removal of 44.2% and TSS removal of 57.1%. Oil palm EFB fibre showed significant turbidity removal of 2.1%, while bamboo fibre attained the lowest BOD concentration of 2.7 mg/L. The water quality index obtained indicates the river water was slightly polluted before and after using the fibre filter with the highest value of 67.99 obtained by using mixed fibre filter.