A textile and apparel industry in Telangana, India, has successfully developed an eco-friendly and energy-efficient wastewater treatment technology using biosurfactants and membrane technology, marking a significant step forward for environmental protection and sustainability. With support from Imprint, a joint project of the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), NIT Warangal collaborated with Prime Textiles, located in the Kakatiya Mega Textile Park (KMTP).
According to a news statement from the Ministry of Science and Technology, they created a pilot-scale textile wastewater treatment system using biosurfactants (BS), cavitation (C), and membrane (M) technologies. Dyes, dissolved solids, suspended solids, and hazardous metals are common pollutants found in textile effluents. Finding effective, efficient solutions to cleanse these effluents prior to release into the environment has been a serious problem.
The team, led by Shirish H. Sonawane of NIT Warangal, Murali Mohan Seepana of NIT Warangal, Ajey Kumar Patel of NIT Warangal, and Mousumi Debnath of Manipal University Jaipur (MUJ), originally worked on separate systems in their own laboratories and optimised the process parameters. MUJ extracted microorganisms from textile effluent and textile effluent contaminated soil to create the biosurfactant for use in the Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (MBBR).
When compared to alternative biological treatment approaches, the inclusion of biosurfactants in the MBBR enabled dye removal and proved efficient in reducing operational time and expense. The cavitation method, an advanced oxidation process (AOP), assisted in lowering the installation cost as well as the carbon footprint.
The capacity of the new technique to create oxidizing radicals in-situ considerably decreased dependency on external oxidizing chemicals. Meanwhile, altering the membrane’s surface with a boehmite sol synthesised by a sol-gel technique reduced pore size from micro to nano-scale, resulting in dramatically improved performance.
The pilot-scale system, located at Prime Textiles, incorporates a series of procedures critical to wastewater treatment. Coagulation lowers turbidity produced by suspended particles, whereas biofilm developed on MBBR reduces heavy metal concentration and destroys biodegradable contaminants.
Cavitation eliminates all sorts of pollutants, resulting in the formation of radicals and energy responsible for pollutant breakdown in-situ. Finally, all residual contaminants are separated by the surface-modified membrane. According to the announcement, this process in the 200-liter per day pilot plant successfully eliminates contaminants, repurposing the cleansed water for agricultural and cleaning applications.
This fruitful relationship resulted in the transfer of technology as well as the filing of two patents. It provides a long-term solution for KMTP’s textile effluent by converting harmful wastewater into irrigation for neighboring agricultural regions. Because of its cheaper installation cost and smaller carbon footprint, it has enormous potential to replace current secondary treatment facilities.
