Textile Waste Waters: Treatment and Environmental Effects

Abstract

The paper considers the use of water and chemicals in the textile industry and the volume, nature and composition of process effluents, the effect they have on the environment and the limitations they pose on the reuse of water. An outline is given of the methods available for treatment of waste waters from the industry, on site or at a Water Authority's works and the effects that chemical constituents of the effluents have on the treatment processes and on disposal of water and sludge. The assessment and significance of biodegradability and the extent of present‐day knowledge on the biodegradability of the main classes of chemicals used in textile processing are discussed. The paper concludes with a section dealing with the removal of colour from waste waters.

Adsorption study of an industrial dye by an organic clay

“…Soluble dyes are the most difficult to remove. Most of the commercially used dyes are resistant to biodegradation (Mahlok et al 1975;Horning 1977), photo degradation (Gardiner and Borne 1978) and oxidizing agents (Poots et al 1976). While both biological and physical/chemical methods have been employed for dye removal, the former have not been very successful, due to the essential non-biodegradable nature of most of the dyes (Mahlok et al 1975;Horning 1977;Brower and Reed 1987).…”

Adsorption of hazardous dye crystal violet from wastewater by waste materials

“…Over the years, the possibility of techniques such as oxidative degradation [4], photodegradation [5], electrocoagulation [6,7], and biochemical degradation [8] have been exploited, but these methods possess drawbacks due to of their inapplicability to largescale units along with both energy and chemical intensiveness. Adsorption is a well-known and superior technique for dye and organic removal because of its easy operation, insensitivity to toxic substances, ability to treat concentrated forms of the dyes, and the possibility of reusing the spent adsorbent via regeneration [9].…”

Absorption of carbon dioxide by raw and treated dye-bath effluents

“…Dye-bath effluents are characterized as highly alkaline and with a great buffering capacity [8,9]. In this respect, dye-bath effluent (Table 1) from a nearby textile industry was utilized as chemical solvent in these experiments.…”

“…Moreover, the effluent is rich in dissolved textile dyes; therefore it presents a deep color, which comprises the main environmental concern of this type of wastewaters [8,9]. Treatment with ferrous sulfate is a very common method for the decoloration of the above industrial effluent [9][10][11].…”

“…Furthermore, decoloration is achieved by the reductive fission of the chromophore part (azo bond, -N N-) of the azo-reactive dye molecule. Therefore, the treated dyebath effluent, although colorless, is rich in aromatic amines and requires further treatment [9][10][11].…”