A comparative treatability study for textile wastewater: Agricultural waste adsorbent versus activated carbon

Abstract

This study aimed to remove color from textile wastewater taken from a common effluent channel in Bursa, western Turkey. For this purpose, chemical coagulation with various coagulants including Al-2(SO4)center dot 18H(2)O, FeCl3 center dot 6H(2)O and FeSO4 center dot 7H(2)O was applied, followed by adsorption processes. In the coagulation experiments, the maximum color removal efficiency (48%) was obtained at pH 6.5 with a 300 mg/L dose of Al-2(SO4)(3)center dot 18H(2)O. The adsorption experiments were conducted using 5 g each of agricultural waste adsorbent (corncob) particles with dimensions of 0.25 mm, 0.50 mm, 0.85 mm and 1.25 mm on the chemically treated wastewater samples, and color removal efficiencies of up to 100% were obtained. In addition, adsorption columns were designed according to the experimental data. As a result of the design calculations, 84 tons of the corncob are required to effectively remove color from 10,000 m(3) of textile wastewater. In addition to the color removal efficiencies of the applied processes, the associated operating costs were also calculated.