Membrane-Based Treatment of Textile Industry Wastewaters

Textile industry is distinguished from other industries by using a great variety of chemicals and large water consumption. As the cost of freshwater increases and the regulations become stringent, the need for reuse of textile effluents is growing enormously. In this article, membrane-based treatments of textile industry wastewater is discussed. First, characteristics of textile industry wastewater are given. Then, treatment scenarios at different points of the industry are explained. Nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) separation processes with/without ultrafiltration (UF) pretreatment are investigated in detail for segregated streams. It is observed that segregated water reuse concept has more advantages than the end-of-pipe treatment by means of water volume reused and chemicals recycled.