Potentiality of Pressmud as an Additional Material in Soil Amendments to Enhance Soil Fertility and Strength Ability

In Malaysia, there are some accumulation of sugar refinery byproducts with a lot of this material not being utilized in a productive manner, while, these byproducts had the great potential when mixed into agricultural soils as organic fertilizer with many of benefits that can improve soil health, and sustainable agronomic productivity. Pressmud or known as filter cake is a by-product of sugar industry and for every 100 tons of sugarcane crushed about 3 tons of pressmud cake is left behind as by-product. This studies carried out on this material have not properly summarized their characteristics properties that they can be used as aid for future works. Data from tests involving pressmud samples from Malayan Sugar Manufacturing (MSM) Prai Berhad, Penang which was part of a larger collection was analyzed. The physicochemical properties of pressmud characterization as well as leaching test were carried out. The physicochemical and engineering properties involved compaction behavior, permeability, cation exchange capacity (CEC), compressive stress test and its surface functional groups. The leaching test method included batch equilibrium test and column test. The optimum value of water content in pressmud was determined in the compaction test. It was found out that pressmud has higher optimum water content value was observed. The permeability test of pressmud gave value in ranges of 1.84 x 10-5 cm/s. The Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) of pressmud indicated value in the range of 99 to 101 meq/100 g. The high cation exchange capacity indicated that pressmud was believed to be primarily responsible for sorption of metal ions. It can be concluded that pressmud having the capability to remove heavy metals through CEC process. Pressmud also showed higher compressive strength value. Batch equilibrium test glaringly showed that pressmud have the capability to remove from 53.6%-93.8% metal removed from metal solutions for Chromium (Cr), Copper (Cu), Manganese (Mn), Nickle (Ni), Lead (Pb) and Zinc (Zn). From the result of column test, pressmud alone was able to retain efficiently all the heavy metals as these metals did not reach 1 (relative concentration) until 10 pore volume (PV.) indicating that pressmud was a good mixture material as it can assist in adsorption of heavy metals. Based on the characterization study, removal efficiency and column test, pressmud has great potentiality to be used as an additional material in soil amendments to enhance soil fertility and strength ability.