Treatment of Biorefractory Organic Compounds in Dyeing and Printing Process Textile Wastewater with Electron Beam Radiation

Abstract The biodegradability improvement of simulated textile dyeing (reactive), printing, and overall wastewater was carried out by electron beam (e-beam) radiation for an activated sludge process. The change in values of chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and ratio of BOD/COD were analyzed with respect to the applied e-beam dose. The ratio of BOD/COD for unirradiated dyeing, printing and overall textile wastewater was observed in the range of 0.05–0.3, which indicates it as nonbiodegradable wastewater. This ratio increased with the e-beam radiation in the case of reactive dye effluent, indicating transformation of nonbiodegradable contaminants to degradable ones. This ratio was found to have decreased further for the printing effluent, indicating the formation of nonbiodegradable constituents. The UV-visible absorbance and FTIR spectrum were obtained for the dyeing and printing effluent. A similar study was carried out for mixed effluent with and without presence of printing constituents. This study showed that irradiation with e-beam as a pretreatment can improve the biodegradability for dye house (reactive dye) effluent; however it is not as effective for printing effluent even at higher doses.