Advancements in effluent treatment Introduction The textile processing industry is characterized by its comparatively high specific water consumption

and chemical usage. It uses water as the principal medium for removing impurities, applying dyes and finishing agents. For each ton of produced fabric 20-350m3 of water are consumed, the rather wide range reflecting the variety of processes and process sequences [1]. Textile waste water treatment for industrial reuse remains as a complicated problem due to several reasons. Among them are: 1) Higher levels of Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) content of the waste water; 2) Non-biodegradable nature of organic dye stuffs present in the effluent.

Classification of waste water treatment process Primary Treatment Screening: Coarse suspended matters such as rags, pieces of fabric, fibres, yarns and lint are removed. The suspended fibres have to be removed otherwise they may affect the secondary treatment system. They are reported to clog trickling filters. Sedimentation: This process is particularly useful for treatment of wastes containing high percentage of settable solids or when the waste is subjected to combined treatment with sewage. Equalization: Effluent streams are collected into pit. Neutralization: Normally, pH values of cotton finishing effluents are on the alkaline side. Hence, pH value of equalized effluent should be adjusted. Use of dilute sulphuric acid is common. Chemical coagulation and Mechanical flocculation: In mechanical flocculation, the textile waste water is passed through a tank under gentle stirring; the finely divided suspended solids coalesce into larger particles and settle out. Chemical coagulants are used. It is a controlled process, which forms a floc (flocculent precipitate) and results in obtaining a clear effluent free from matter in suspension or in the colloidal state. Secondary Treatment Some of the commonly used biological treatment processes are described below: Aerated lagoons: These are large holding tanks where effluents from primary treatment processes are collected and are aerated with mechanical devices, such as floating aerators, for

about 2 to 6 days. A healthy flocculent sludge is formed which brings about oxidation of the dissolved organic matter. The major disadvantages are the large space requirements. Trickling filters: The trickling filters usually consists of circular or rectangular beds, 1 m to 3 m deep, made of well-graded media, over which wastewater is sprinkled uniformly with help of a slowly rotating distributor (such as rotary sprinkler) equipped with orifices or nozzles. Thus, the waste water trickles through the media. The filter is arranged in such a fashion that air can enter at the bottom. A gelatinous film, comprising of bacteria and aerobic microorganisms known as Zooglea, is formed on the surface of the filter medium, which thrive on the nutrients supplied by the waste water. The organic impurities in the waste water are adsorbed and then oxidized. Activated sludge process: In this process, the waste water is aerated in a reaction tank in which some microbial floc is suspended. The aerobic bacterial flora bring about biological degradation of the waste into carbon dioxide and water molecule, while consuming some organic matter for synthesizing bacteria. The bacteria flora grows and remains suspended in the form of a floc, which is called Activated Sludge. The effluent from the reaction tank is separated from the sludge by settling and discharged. Tertiary Treatment Processes Oxidation techniques: A variety of oxidizing agents can be used to decolorize wastes. Sodium hypochlorite decolorizes dye bath efficiently. Though it is a low cost technique, but it forms absorbable toxic organic halides (AOX). Membrane technologies: Reverse osmosis is the important example of membrane process. The TDS from waste water can be removed by reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis is suitable for removing ions and larger species from dye bath effluents with high efficiency (up to > 90%), clogging of the membrane by dyes after long usage and high capital cost are the main drawbacks of this process. Reverse osmosis membrane process is also suitable for removing high salt concentrations so that the treated effluent can be re-used again in the processing. Ion exchange method: This is used for the removal of undesirable anions and cations from waste water. It involves the passage of waste water through the beds of ion exchange resins where some undesirable cations or anions of waste water get exchanged for sodium or hydrogen ions of the resin.

Adsorption: It is the exchange of material at the interface between two immiscible phases in contact with one another. Adsorption appears to have considerable potential for the removal of colour from industrial effluent. Advancements 1. Advanced Oxidation Processes The aim of AOP is the generation of free hydroxyl radical (OH), a highly reactive oxidizing agent, which can destroy even the recalcitrant pollutants. The generation oh hydroxyl is highly accelerated by combining ozone (O3), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), titanium dioxide (TiO2), photocatalysis, UV radiation. Various types of AOPs include, O3/UV, H2O2/UV, O3/H2O2 O3/UV process: - The free radicals produced due to the decomposition of ozone, react with a variety of impurities such as metal salts, organic matter including micro organisms, hydrogen and hydroxide ions. Peroxone (H2O2/O3):- When a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and ozone is used to treat wastewater, H2O2 acts as a catalyst and accelerates the decomposition of ozone to hydroxyl radical. At acidic pH, H2O2 reacts very slowly with O3 whereas at high pH the dissociation of H2O2 into HO2 is very high which in turn initiates ozone decomposition more effectively than OH H2O2/UV: - H2O2 alone is quite ineffective in the treatment of textile wastewater at both alkaline and acidic pH while under UV irradiation, H2O2 are photolysed to form two hydroxyl radicals (2OH) which react with organic contaminants [10]. Hydroxyl free radicals have a higher oxidation potential (2.8 V) than hydrogen peroxide (1.78 V). It has been demonstrated that UVH2O2 process is able to destroy totally the chromophoric structure of dyes with the varying reaction rates for different dyes. H2O2/UV offers several advantages over other AOPs viz., (i) no sludge generation during any stage of treatment (ii) can be carried out under ambient conditions (iii) oxygen formed can be utilized for aerobic biological decay process. Various combinations of AOP processes like ozone, UV, H2O2 etc. may provide efficient treatment of textile wastewater depending upon the characteristics of wastewater to be treated. Further, the economic optimization of these processes must be worked out for treating voluminous amount of wastewater by AOPs. [2] 2. Electrochemical oxidation step combined with a membrane filtration [3]

It is presented as an effective, selective, economical, and clean alternative for dealing with wastewaters bearing high loads of organic compounds. The aim of introducing membrane filtration is not only to reduce water but also to reduce the consumption of energy as the warm water can be recovered. 3. Combined chemicalbiological treatment [4] The inability of biological treatment processes in degrading dye compounds makes chemical treatment a necessary stage prior to bio-treatment in order to produce more readily biodegradable materials. A literature survey shows that research has been and continues to be conducted in the areas of chemical and combined chemicalbiological treatments in order to improve the biodegradation of dyestuffs and minimize the sludge production. 4. High energy physical process[5] High energy physical process is a new wastewater treatment technology. When the high energy particle beam bombard aqueous solution, the water molecules would come up with excitation and ionization, produce ions, excited molecules, secondary electrons.. It would produce highly reactive HO radicals and H atoms, which would react with organic matter to degrade it. The advantages of using high-energy physics process treat dyeing wastewater are the small size of the equipment, high removal rate and simple operation. However, the device used to generate high energy particle is expensive, technically demanding is high, energy consumption is big, and the energy efficiency is low and so on. Therefore, it needs a lot of research work before put into actual project.

References 1. P. Schoeberl, M. Brik, R. Braun, W. Fuchs, Treatment and recycling of textile wastewater case study and development of a recycling concept , Desalination 171 (2004) 173-183 2. Shashank Singh Kalra, Satyam Mohan, Alok Sinha and Gurdeep Singh, Advanced Oxidation Processes for Treatment of Textile and Dye Wastewater:A Review, 2nd International Conference on Environmental Science and Development IPCBEE vol.4 (2011) 3. Xuejun Che et al., Advanced treatment of textile wastewater for reuse using electrochemical oxidation and membrane filtration, Water SA Vol. 31 No. 1 January 2005

4. S.M. Ghoreishi, R. Haghighi, Chemical catalytic reaction and biological oxidation for treatment of non-biodegradable textile effluent, Chemical Engineering Journal 95 (2003) 163 169 5. Zongping Wang, Miaomiao Xue, Kai Huang and Zizheng Liu, Textile Dyeing Wastewater Treatment Advances in Treating Textile Effluent, pp 92-116