Reuse of incinerated textile mill sludge as adsorbent for dye removal

Abstract

Textile industry is one of the largest and oldest industries in India. Textile mill uses large quantities of water for its variety of wet processes, which in turn generates a large amount of waste water. Effluent treatment plants treat textile mill waste water using a variety of chemical coagulants thus producing greater amount sludge. Disposal of sludge is a challenging problem. In this study Textile mill sludge was incinerated at 800°C and used as an adsorbent without any activation. SEM images confirmed that, sludge ash was porous in nature and could be used as an adsorbent. For the entire study, Remazol blue dye was used. Experimental studies were carried out in an acidic pH range, showed good dye removal by using incinerated textile mill sludge ash. Experimental results obtained fitted well in Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. © 2015, Korean Society of Civil Engineers and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.