Enviromental problems don’t seem to stop, even though some may affirm that their impact on

the planet (atmosphere, ecosystems and of course human beings) has lowered compared to
past years.

Textile industries are focused on manufacturing clothes or any type of raw material for future
use. However, there is a big concern regarding textile industry pollution since they’ve shown a
tendency to grow and with them their impact on the environment (Lucena, 2010).

The list of chemicals that they dispose -whether they are in aqueous, solid or gaseous state-
pollute the environment at an alarming rate. Some examples of these chemicals are: soaping
agents, soda ash, peroxides, softeners, salts and dyes (Goldstein et al., 1993)..

Even though dyes are a key ingredient in the manufacturing process, they are bad to every
aqueous ecosystem and their life: fishes and plants. Why are they so bad you might ask? Even
though they are classified in almost 4 large groups, they have a common trait among them:
they reduce the surface tension on water (Barbusisky, 2009).

A low surface tension on water may seem harmless, but some animals, like mosquitoes,
depend on a high surface tension of water (72 dynes/cm at 25°C) to feed themselves. Also,
when you dig deeper in the meaning of surface tension, it is what gives rain drops their
spherical shape. Altering surface tension could easily unbalance an ecosystem by breaking
their food chains and food webs (Barbusisky, 2009).

A cheap and simple, yet effective, treatment can be applied to these waste effluents just so the
concentration of dyes among them is reduced and of course the impact that they have on the
environment is minimal. This method is called an Advanced Oxidation Process or AOP.

An Advanced Oxidation Process is a physicochemical method that can alter the chemical
structure of chemical compounds, not all of them. They are used in an industrial level to
reduce the effects of certain contaminants (Goldstein et al., 1993).

The way that these chemical reactions occur is by creating highly reactive radicals that are able
to oxidize the contaminant (in other words degrade it) and since its not the same chemical
compound, its hazardous effect on the environment is ¨erased from the picture.¨ The most
common radical is [-OH] (Zhou y Zhang, 2017).

A Fenton Process is the most common Advanced Oxidation Process since it’s been used to
treat water effluents that have high concentrations of dyes. Another use of the Fenton process
is improvement of organoleptic characteristics of treated waters, reducing harmful effects of
disinfectants in marine life and removal of resistant substances like heavy metals (Mongue et
al., 2018).

There are four stages for the process, all analyzed in the discussion section of the following
manuscript, the first one is adjusting the pH of the problem solution (the water effluent in this
case), the next stage is the oxidation reaction, after this neutralizing the solution is necessary
due to the change in acidity, finally the last step is coagulation or as some may say it’s the
sedimentation of ferric ions (Neyens y Baeyens, 2003).

Even though this type of Advanced Oxidation Process has been used for many years, its limits
are unknown, hence the motivation to explore those limits by applying a Fenton Process to
reduce the concentration of dyes in water effluents.