Palm oil mill effluent (POME) is high strength wastewater derived from processing of palm fruit. It is generated in large quantities in all oil palm producing nations where it is a strong pollutant amenable to microbial degradation being rich in organic carbon, nitrogen, and minerals. Valorization and treatment of POME with seven yeast isolates was studied under scalable conditions by using POME to produce value-added yeast biomass. POME was used as sole source of carbon and nitrogen and the fermentation was carried out at 150？rpm, 28 ± 2°C using an inoculum size of 1？mL of 106 cells. Yeasts were isolated from POME, dump site, and palm wine. The POME had chemical oxygen demand (COD) 114.8？gL？1, total solid 76？gL？1, total suspended solid (TSS) 44？gL？1 and total lipid 35.80？gL？1. Raw POME supported accumulation of 4.42？gL？1 dry yeast with amino acid content comparable or superior to the FAO/WHO standard for feed use SCP. Peak COD reduction (83%) was achieved with highest biomass accumulation in 96？h using Saccharomyces sp . POME can be used as carbon source with little or no supplementation to achieve waste-to-value by producing feed grade yeast with reduction in pollution potential. 1. Introduction Palm oil is the most widely consumed vegetable oil and accounts for about 33% of total vegetable oil production in the world [1]. Global palm oil production has been dominated by Indonesia and Malaysia and to a lesser extent by Colombia, Thailand, and Nigeria. Combined, these countries produce over 93% of global palm oil output [2, 3]. Nigeria is currently the fifth leading producer with over 930,000 metric tons annually [4]. The palm oil industry in Nigeria is a major agroenterprise especially in the southern parts where palm trees grow in the wild and in plantations [5]. About 80% of the palm oil industry in Nigeria is dominated by smallholders who typically use manual equipment and, to a lesser extent, semimechanized processors for processing palm fruit [2, 3]. Processing of palm fruit in both methods employs large volumes of water. This results in the production of copious volumes of the liquid waste known as palm oil mill effluent (POME) [6, 7]. Estimates of the volume of POME produced per litre of palm oil extracted from palm fruits are few and variable. This is occasioned by several variables including differences in the efficiencies of the different processes and nature of the fruit. Manual processes appear to be the least efficient in terms of volume of POME generated, with excess of 10 litres of POME being generated for each litre of oil produced in
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