Effect of aeration on colour removal from textile industry wastewater

Textile industry processes are among the most environmentally unfriendly industrial processes, because they produce coloured wastewaters that are heavily polluted the environment. Therefore, wastewater from textile industry has to be treated before being discharged into the environment. In this study, experiments were performed at pH of 7 to investigate the adsorption capacities of locally available low cost bioadsorbents like neem leaves, orange peels, peanut hulls and coconut coir pith powders to remove colour in a textile industry wastewater. The experiments were conducted by different process parameters like adsorbent dosage, temperature, contact time and agitator speed using batch adsorption method and for both with and without aeration. From the experimental investigations, the maximum colour removal percentage for both with and without aeration in a textile industry wastewater was obtained at an optimum bioadsorbent dosage of 300 mg, an optimum contact time of 75 min., an optimum temperature of 330 K and an optimum agitator speed of 600 rpm. Further, from the validation experiments, it was found that results were higher than the results obtained by different process parameters for both with and without aeration. From the results of various process parameters, peanut hulls powder achieved the maximum colour removal percentage for both with and without aeration followed by coconut coir pith, orange peels and neem leaves powders. However, the order of increased in colour removal percentage with aeration is orange peels powder followed by neem leaves, peanut hulls and coconut coir pith powders.