Waste Water Treatment in Chemical Industries: The Concept and Current Technologies

The world’s chemical industries face formidable environmental regulatory challenges in treating their wastewater effluents. The present work aims at highlighting the various industrial wastewater treatment technologies currently available including physico-chemical and biological processes as well as constructed wetland and conventional or advanced oxidation processes. Activated carbon prepared from low cost material, Agricultural by-product materials or modified natural polymers, which is considerably efficient for removal of direct dyes from wastewater, is also discussed. Combinations of anaerobic and aerobic treatment processes are found to be efficient in the removal of soluble biodegradable organic pollutants. The use of membrane in final stage of industrial wastewater treatments is increasing. The chemical oxidation techniques to treat wastewater, classical chemical treatment and advanced oxidation processes, is discussed.