Converting Industrial Textile Wastewater to Drinking Water

Figure 1: Contaminated water from Basra, Iraq (Denchak, 2018)

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water” said W.H.Auden, a
British poet, who witnessed the accounts of the Basra water crisis in 2018. The brackish
water pouring from the taps of homes in Basra has caused stomach ailments and skin rashes
for thousands in the southern Iraqi city once famous for its network of freshwater canals that
gave it the nickname the "Venice of the East." Wastewater pollution is a global
environmental crisis as 80% of the world’s wastewater is dumped back into the environment
untreated, polluting the ecosystem while drastically reducing the gross total suitable water to
sustain human life and activity (Denchak, 2018). According to the United Nations, lack of
awareness for proper wastewater treatment globally will cause detrimental effects to the
global clean water supply with estimations that total available clean water will reduce to one-
third by 2050 (Denchak, 2018).

Among the various wastewater sources, industrial wastewater from the textile
industry has shown to have the most detrimental impact to the environment, contributing
approximately 17-20% of global wastewater pollution (Suryawan, Helmy & Notodarmojo,
2018). Not only that, the textile industry wastewater is typically deemed by researchers to be
highly difficult to treat due to its complex wastewater composition, extreme pH, high
chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and rich in colour
(Zollinger, 2003; Chequer et al., 2013). Therefore, rising concerns of clean water security has
led a team from Jordan to develop a lab scale treatment procedure to convert textile
wastewater from a factory in Zarqa, Jordan into potable grade drinking water (Hani,
Dawagreh & Qasaimeh, 2011)

Hani et al. (2011) team developed a lab scale wastewater treatment procedure that
consists of four stages which are primary treatment, secondary treatment, biological treatment
and ion exchange treatment. The first stage (primary treatment) involves the removal of
course particles via filter cloth while pH was monitored using sulfuric acid and caustic
aqueous solution. Alum (aluminium sulphate) as a coagulating agent was then added and well
mixed with a stirrer to maintain a homogeneous solution and the solid particles were
separated. In the second stage, the sample was treated via flocculation using polyelectrolyte
agent. The sample was well stirred with the polyelectrolyte to get homogeneous floc
suspension which was separated by filtration. In the third stage, the sample was aerated for 24
hours while urea and phosphoric acid was periodically added with continuous mixing. Water
from stage three was pass through a filter bed to further remove solids before entering stage
four. In the final stage, the sample is left with mainly dissolved ions and are treated by
passing the water through an ion exchange bed to remove ions. The process developed by
Hani et al. (2011) is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1: Lab scale treatment procedure to convert textile wastewater to drinking

water (Hani et al., 2011)
 The laboratory treated water was compared with the international standards for
drinking water set by the World Health Organization (WHO). Hani et al. (2011) found that
their procedure treated the textile wastewater into potable water within permissible limits set
by the WHO as seen in Figure 3 and 4 which displays the comparison of chemical and
physical characteristics between the standards set by the WHO for potable water, potable
water produced using lab scale treatment procedure developed by Hani et al. (2011) and
industrial textile wastewater collected from Zarqa, Jordan. Therefore, Hani et al. (2011) has
developed a lab scale treatment procedure that could reduce wastewater pollution and resolve
concerns of clean water scarcity.

Figure 3: Chemical characteristics of potable water quality standard, laboratory treated water
and wastewater (Hani et al., 2011)

Figure 4: Physical characteristics of potable water quality standard, laboratory treated water
and wastewater (Hani et al., 2011)
References

Chequer, F. M. D., Oliveira, G. A. R. D., Ferraz, E. R. A., Carvalho, J., Zanoni, M. V. B., &
Oliveir, D. P. D. (2013). Textile Dyes: Dyeing Process and Environmental
Impact. Eco-Friendly Textile Dyeing and Finishing. doi: 10.5772/53659

Denchak, M. (2018). Water Pollution: Everything You Need to Know. Retrieved from
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/water-pollution-everything-you-need-know

Hani, F. B., Dawagreh, A., & Qasaimeh, M. A. (2011). Treatment and converting of
industrial wastewater into potable water. Ass. Univ. Bull. Environ. Res., 14(1), 23–29.

Suryawan, I. W. K., Helmy, Q., & Notodarmojo, S. (2018). Textile wastewater treatment:
colour and COD removal of reactive black-5 by ozonation. IOP Conference Series:
Earth and Environmental Science, 106, 012102. doi: 10.1088/1755-
1315/106/1/012102

Zollinger, H. (2003). Color chemistry: syntheses, properties, and applications of organic

dyes and pigments. Zurich, Switzerland: Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acts..