ABSTRACT
The complexity of distillery effluents makes it difficult to treat by developed single-stage primary, secondary, and tertiary treatment methods as they contain heavy metals and refractory organic pollutants with complex structures, which are resistant to chemical or biological degradation. Individually, these methods of treatment have their limitations; therefore, the search for effective treatment methods is one of the most demanding challenges in the distillery industry for sustainable development. There are high demands to develop pioneering eco-friendly methods capable of providing a more complete cleanup of distillery effluent pollutants more economically to conform to discharge norms. Therefore, treatment of complex and hazardous distillery effluent by a novel two-step treatment/phase separation method is a novel and promising approach for its degradation and detoxification for environmental safety. This chapter presents an overview of sequential and hybrid approaches used for the treatment of distillery effluent. A major part of this chapter focuses on the sequential treatment of distillery effluent using plant and microorganisms for sustainable development of effective technology for full-scale treatment.
