Ecofriendly Decolorization of Textile Wastewater using Natural Coagulants

Abstract

The textile dyeing industry consumes large quantities of water and produces large volumes of wastewater from different processes in dyeing and finishing processes. The low-cost, easily available naturally prepared coagulants like moringa seed powder, maize seed powder, green bean powder and tamarind seed powder as an alternative to recent expensive coagulant methods for reactive dye removal has been investigated in this study. Various process parameters like pH, coagulant dose, flocculation time and also its optimization were exploited. The maximum percentage color removal was found to be 80.26, 78.30, 74.04, 72.68 and 70.53 for moringa, corn, aluminiumsulphate, green bean and tamarind, respectively, at pH 9.0, coagulant dose of 30 mgL^-1, flocculation time 120 min. The sludge volume index (SVI) was calculated for these parameters including process optimization. Natural coagulants were better coagulant than aluminiumsulphate which corresponds to color removal and sludge volume index.