Wax removal from textile wastewater using an innovative hybrid baffle tank

Abstract

Textile industries are among the biggest water consumers and hazardous wastewater generators. Due to the use of wax as physical resistance in textile industries’ procedures, efficient pre-treatment is required before conventional wastewater treatment process. Conventional methods of wax removal suffer from efficiency per hour of less than 50%. This study proposes a sustainable design and application of a baffle separation tank with nano sodium silicate, as a key chemical, in order to remove waxes, from textile wastewater. The baffle tank is equipped with eight baffle layers of different heights, encompassing three separation zones. Different design parameters and related design equations for baffle tank, were studied. Based on the results, optimum operational conditions were discovered and applied for two sets of synthetized textile wastewater containing constant amounts of wax, dye and nano sodium silicate but different reactive dyes. The results indicate the total wax removal efficiency by the baffle tank in the optimum pre-treatment time (one hour) was more than 95%, while the conventional method achieved less than 89% in the optimum operational time (eight hours) in both sets. The efficiency of other chemicals removal (e.g. sodium-silicate) during pre-treatment was in the range of 29–32.4% and 12.5–13.6% for sets one and two, respectively.

Keywords:

• Wastewater
• textile
• wax removal
• pre-treatment
• physical treatment
• baffle tank

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.