ABSTRACT
Textile industry is considered a highly water consuming industry that alone is responsible for one fourth of the total industrial wastewater generated in the world. Bleaching and dyeing are the main processes which often release the main constituents that make textile wastewater. These industries utilized a vast number of dyes in which most of them are synthetic in origin, leading to a very strong color of textile wastewater; resulting in an increase in the turbidity and toxicity of the receiving water bodies. Due to the toxic and persistent nature of many synthetic dyes like azo dyes, the treatment of textile wastewater has proved to be problematic in terms of degradability and further production of toxic end products. Conventional treatment was found to be inefficient in the degradation of synthetic dyes, which needs further advanced processes like reverse osmosis, nano-filtration and elcetro-oxidation.
Microalgal remediation could be a cost-effective and eco-friendly approach for the treatment of textile wastewater. They are found to be very effective in discoloration and degradation of textile dyes, due to presence of several functional groups such as -OH, RCOO-, -NH2, and PO4 -3, which helps in bioadsorption and bioabsorption of the dye molecules. The absorbed dye molecules could be converted to non-colored compounds or used for their growth needs. Further they are also able to sequestrate the heavy metals and nutrients from the textile wastewater.
