EXPLORATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL FRIENDLY ADSORBENTS FOR TREATMENT OF AZO DYES FROM TEXTILE WASTEWATER AND ITS DOSAGE OPTIMIZATION

Abstract

The major industries contributing to water pollution is textile mills. In the present study, the synthetic waste water was treated by using red brick dust and alum. Its evaluation was done by measuring pH, EC, TDS and Color removal percentage. The experiment carried out with different concentration of red brick dust and alum to measure the dosage suitability of these adsorbents for dye color removal. The pH of synthetic dye was maintained at 4, 7 and 9 then passed through the red brick dust and alum. The sequential treatment, adsorption followed by coagulation was adopted to treat the wastewater. Dosage variability showed very significant results and 75% red brick dust with combination of 25% alum concentration was found favorable for color removal of dye. The material was capable of removing color up to 92% at pH 7 at normal temperature. Other parameters like EC and pH showed abnormal trends as the amount of alum was increased but TDS were tend to decreased with the increasing amount of alum. The experimental result showed that the material has good potential to remove color from effluent and good potential as an alternate low cost adsorbent. There are many physical and chemical treatment methods available for removal of color but all these methods have problems associated such as secondary effluent, hazardous and harmful end products, high energy consuming, non-economic etc. These problems can be overcome by the use of physical treatment method (adsorption and coagulation method) which is not hazardous for environment.

Keywords

• Textile effluent
• Azo dyes
• Red brick dust
• Alum
• Adsorption
• Coagulation