A REASERCH ON COCOA POD HUSK ACTIVATED CARBON FOR TEXTILE INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER COLOUR REMOVAL

Abstract

One of the main problems in the environmental engineering all over the world is industrial wastewater treatment. Taking coloured wastewater into main consideration, the problem seems to be much worse. If coloured wastewater produced in industries is directly discharged to receiving bodies like streams, rivers, reservoirs etc. it interferes with the transmission of sunlight into the stream and lessens photo synthetic action. Property values decreases along the polluted river. The coloured wastewater interferes with oxygen absorption from the atmosphere. It is difficult to remove colour in water treatment plants. It is realized that the wastewater treatment can be done with eco friendly manner by using agriculture wastes. The efficient among the agricultural wastes is cocoa. Cocoa is a beverage crop which is a native of Amazon region of South America. In India Cocoa is mainly grown in Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Cocoa pod husk represents between 70 to 75 % of the whole weight of the cocoa fruit, i.e. per each ton of cocoa fruit there will be between 700 to 750 Kg of waste. During activation, it creates millions of pores at the surface of the carbon thus increasing the total surface area up to 1000 m 2 per gram of carbon. The method introduced in the paper proves to be cost efficient and good performing. Results of the experiments show that cocoa pod husk is a material that can be used to produce activated carbon by chemical activation and ZnCl2 showed to be the best chemical activation agent based on the highest BET surface area (780 m2/g in the best case) and pore volume (0.58 m3/g in the best case). The objective of the research is to investigate the efficiency of cocoa pod husk activated carbon for the colour removal from textile industrial wastewater. And also to compare the efficiencies of cocoa pod husk activated carbon and charcoal for colour removal purpose. This research gives an insight to a new approach towards environmental friendly wastewater treatment and sustainable development. The paper includes a research which is done by a case study in a textile industry: "Himatsingka Linens". The work focuses on sampling, testing wastewater characteristics (such as Biochemical Oxygen Demand, colour imparting compounds etc.), finding new methodologies for production of activated carbon from Cocoa pod husk, efficiency analysis of colour removal.