1 - Global scenario and technologies for the treatment of textile wastewater

Abstract

Remediation of textile dye industry effluents has become essential primacy because of severe problems due to esthetic and health issues of human beings, and toxicity to aquatic flora and fauna, since most of these industries are not treating textile effluents before its disposal. Textile industries causing pollution all over the globe, especially China, India, Eastern Europe, USA, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Indonesia, and South Korea, and affecting the livelihood more or less in a similar manner. Since 1950s, research is going on to evaluate the quantum of pollution, its toxic effects on living organisms, and developed various technologies/strategies to reduce the dye contents from textile wastewater and contaminated soils. This chapter introduces the global scenario of textile pollution, countrywide industrial contribution, the environmental impact of pollution, variety of textile dyes, and composition of textile effluents. We have taken a survey of efforts taken by the scientist from 1950s till to date for developing the technologies using physical (adsorption, ultrafiltration, electro-coagulation, photocatalysis, electrochemical combustion, radiation, and nanoparticles), chemical (ozonation and Fenton's reagent) and biological processes (microbial remediation and phytoremediation) along with some advanced techniques (wetlands, engineered bacterial cells, and microbial fuel cells) for the remediation of textile dye effluents. The utility of the developed technologies and future prospective of these technologies for remediation of textile wastewater in the field scale is also discussed.