Green iron particles in textile and dyebath wastewater decolorization

Abstract

The world is fronting water quality crisis and industrialization has augmented the illegal discharge of wastewater to the environment. Textile is one of such industry, generates large amount of colored wastewater and discharges untreated wastewater into nearby environment, poses major threats to the environment worldwide. The textile wastewater consists of the spent water from pretreatment, dyeing and post treatment process of the textiles. However the dyebath wastewater is highly concentrated and consists of mixture of unfixed dyes. The effective and eco-friendly treatment of textile wastewater is challenging. It is essential to remediate the dyebath wastewater in order to maintain environmental sustainability. In this paper, the feasibility of green iron particles on real textile and dyebath wastewater decolorization was investigated. Green iron particles were synthesized using green tea leaves extracts and grape leaves extracts. The synthesized particles were characterized for size, morphology, crystal structure, elemental analysis, functional groups attached and specific surface area. 2–6 g/L of green iron was utilized to decolorize 63%–89% of highly concentrated dye-bath wastewater and 80%–92% of textile wastewater. The pH 10.1–10.8 of wastewater was reduced to 8.1–8.9. Green iron removed nearly 50%–54% of chemical oxygen demand from the wastewa-ter and concluded that partial mineralization was possible. The reusability of green iron particles was achieved for 3 cycles. Thus the present investigation confirmed the feasibility of green iron particles in textile and dyebath wastewater decolorization.