Textile wastewater treatment using solar photo-Fenton process

The textile industry is one of the major water consumers. Considering the large volume of water consumption, the textile industry is one of the producers of industrial wastewater. The dye removal from the wastewater generated by the textile industry is carried out in various ways, including physical, chemical, and biological methods or a combination thereof. Studies on wastewater treatment have devoted much attention to advanced oxidation processes. The solar photo-Fenton method has many applications for pollutant removal from aqueous solutions. The present study was conducted on the wastewater of Borujerd Textile Company (Borujerd city–Iran). The experiments were designed and performed using response surface methodology based on the Box–Behnken method. Solar lamp intensity (0–300 w/m²), process time (60–240 min), hydrogen peroxide concentration (100–600 mg/L), and iron ion concentration (10–60 mg/L) were selected as the operational variables. In addition, the removal rate of chemical oxygen demand was considered as the response of experimental design. Under optimal conditions (namely, \({I}_{SL}=150\frac{W}{{m}^{2}}\) $I_{\mathit{SL}}=150\frac{W}{m^2}$ , \(t=157 {\text{min}}\) $t=157\text{min}$ , \({C}_{{H}_{2}{O}_{2}}=600\frac{mg}{L}\) $C_{H_2{O}_2}=600\frac{\mathit{mg}}{L}$ and \({C}_{F{e}^{2+}}=60\frac{mg}{L}\) $C_{F{e}^{2+}}=60\frac{\mathit{mg}}{L}$ ), the chemical oxygen demand removal rate reached the highest (i.e., 79.54%).