Study of the Effect of Rice Husk As An Active Low-cost Adsorbant for Textile Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Textile wastewater contains different colors which are harmful to the environment. Activated carbon can be used for the decolorization of textile wastewater. Most of the textile plants do not use the activated carbon due to its expensive cost and still it was classified as imported item. Low-cost adsorbant produced from locally available materials can solve this problem. This paper describes the color removal of textile wastewater by adsorption process using rice husk in a low-cost method. The maximum adsorption of color was found at an optimum temperature of 27 °C with the retention time of 24 h. In this study the rice husk obtained from agriculture waste is investigated as viable materials for treatment of sulfate, iron, chloride, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and chemical oxygen demand (COD) available in textile waste water. The result shows promising reduction in the COD, BOD reduction and also provides good colour removal.
Keywords: textile industry, rice husk, adsorbant, wastewater