Industrial Wastewater Treatment Technologies For Reuse, Recycle, And Recovery: Advantages, Disadvantages, And Gaps.

Abstract

To reduce demand and discharge, instead of industrial wastewater being poorly treated and disposed of, it can be recycled, reused, or recovered if it is properly managed, thus having a substantial decrease in the water requirement and environmental impacts. The challenge is to select the appropriate process or combination of processes to achieve this based on the wastewater quality. Consequently, the objective of this investigation is to review every technology from conventional through advanced, for reliable and sustainable wastewater treatment and derived sludges, focusing on advantages, disadvantages, and technical gaps for development. Even though there is a wide range of possible technologies, it was evinced that there is huge potential to exploit and make them economically and sustainably viable for waste processing and circular economy, even in the mature massively implemented wastewater treatment technologies in the industry. Overall, we identify that independently from the technology to be studied, the future investigations on every unit, especially on those not vastly implemented, should be focused on: (1) The capacity in removing selected pollutants and decreasing impurities, (2) energy efficiency, (3) environmental safety, (4) economic viability, (5) hybrid processes, and (6) sustainability by waste processing.