A Comprehensive Review on the Sustainable Treatment of Textile Wastewater: Zero Liquid Discharge and Resource Recovery Perspectives

Clothing, one of the basic needs, demands the growth of textile industries worldwide, resulting in higher consumption and pollution of water. Consequently, it requires extensive treatment of textile effluent for environmental protection as well as reuse purposes. Primary treatment, secondary treatment, and tertiary treatment are the three major phases of textile wastewater treatment. Secondary treatment under aerobic and anaerobic circumstances is carried out to decrease BOD, COD, phenol, residual oil, and color, whereas primary treatment is utilized to remove suspended particles, oil, grease, and gritty materials. However, biological treatment is not fully capable of treating water according to discharge/reuse standards. Hence, tertiary treatment is used to remove final contaminants from the wastewater. Adsorption is regarded as one of the most feasible processes for dye and metal removal in consideration of cost and variation in the adsorbent. Though membrane filtration is an efficient process, the cost of operation limits its application. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a universally applicable treatment solution for textile effluents. Therefore, the only flexible strategy is to combine several therapy modalities. Treatment of complicated, high-strength textile wastewater depending on pollutant load will be more successful if physical, chemical, and biological approaches are used in tandem. Enforcement of stringent environmental regulation policies, increasing costs and demand for freshwater, and the rising costs and difficulties associated with wastewater disposal are accelerating efforts toward achieving ZLD. Additionally, research into methods for extracting useful materials from wastewater has blossomed in recent years. As such, the purpose of this analysis is to give a holistic overview of textile wastewater treatment systems, with a focus on zero liquid discharge (ZLD) and efficient resource recovery, both of which may hasten the transition to more sustainable water management