Research Projects

Textiles industry uses substantial volume of water and number of dyes and chemicals during the conversion of fibers into yarn and yarn into fabrics. Waste water discharge from these industries containing high concentrations of dyes and high toxicity causes serious problems on surrounding ecosystem and human health. Many treatment methods are available for the treatment of textile effluent, such as conventional biological treatment and physico-chemical process. The main drawbacks of these methods are not being able to completely degrade the dye molecules present in the waste water. To overcome this issue, researchers have been developed and studied advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) since the 20th century to degrade complex nature of dyes in the textile wastewater. Recently, cavitaion has been widely applied as an advanced oxidation technology along with other AOPs to enhance the degradation of organic pollutants. Another method under focus is the use of biosurfactants in waste treatment applications. The potential advantages of biosurfactant treatment as compared with the conventional treatment include: its application to bio-refractory compounds, operability over a wide range of pH, temperature and salinity and reduction in the sludge volume. In recognition of these potential advantages, recent research has focused on the development of hybrid wastewater treatment process with hydrodynamic cavitation and biosurfactant for recycling of textile effluent.