Chapter 11 - Perspectives, Scope, Advancements, and Challenges of Microbial Technologies Treating Textile Industry Effluents

Abstract

The availability of freshwater is decreasing at an alarming rate due to urbanization and unpredictable climate conditions across the globe. The growing need for water is becoming a major challenge because of overuse and excessive demand due to various factors. Wastewater can be defined as the flow-through water from domestic, industrial, or personal use, generally unfit for direct reuse, and requires pretreatment, depending on the kinds of undesirable substances present in it. The textile industry effluents and wastewater problem is one of the most severe environmental threats because it contains high biochemical oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, pH, temperature, turbidity, and toxic chemicals. The direct release of textile wastewater without proper treatment into the water bodies such as ponds, lakes, and rivers create several hazards by polluting them directly and indirectly reaching to the underground water table. Water pollution problems have led to public concerns about water quality and maintaining healthy ecosystems. These problems combined together have led to the evolution of different kinds of wastewater treatment technologies. Microbial treatment technologies for textile effluents and wastewater have gained extensive attention due to high efficiency and wide spectrum of waste composition compared to conventional approaches. Recent technological advancements help us to explore the biotechnological solutions for the textile wastewater reuse and recycling process. The use and application features of synthetic biology focus on the design assembly of core components and parts of enzymes, genetic circuits and metabolic pathways that can be modeled and adjusted to meet performance criteria to solve specific problems. Microbial engineering and genome scale metabolic reconstructions elucidate the novel biosynthetic pathways with potential applications for bioremediation of toxic elements from the industry effluents. New technologies offer variety of prospects over the conventional methods traditionally used, however requires sophisticated design and implementation strategies either in skillsets, knowledge or innovation crucial for global pollution control, energy and sustainable development models.