Ozone as a Sustainable Option for the Treatment of Textile Dye Pollution

The textile industry is the second largest pollution causing industry. Many chemical and mechanical processes involved in the textile industry impose various health and environmental impacts. It is responsible for 20% of all freshwater pollution. The main problem with the textile industry is its untreated effluent discharge. The textile wet process produces approximately 80% discharge of industrial wastewater. Every kilogram of fabric that is generated utilizes up to 100–180 L of water. A textile mill unit generating 8000 kg of fabric per day consumes up to 1.6 million liters of water every day. The presence of different chemicals, dyes, and surfactants in textile wastewater imposes adverse health impacts. Various conventional treatment processes have been widely used by the industries but they have many shortcomings. The industries that treat dye-bath effluent usually use traditional treatment methods like trickling filters, activated sludge, flocculation, coagulation, and reverse osmosis. These processes do not degrade the dyes effectively and produce large volumes of sludge. Ozonation and advanced oxidation methods have recently gained immense popularity in the treatment of textile wastewater due to their high efficiency. AOPs include ozone (O3), O3/H2O2, UV, UV/H2O2, Fenton, and Photo-Fenton processes to treat textile effluent as they are effective for complete color and COD removal. Ozone-based treatment methods are a more sustainable option as ozone is environment friendly gas and provides us with better results compared to other methods. There is a dire need to make action plans or policies for the conservation and management of water and wastewater as the pollution levels are continuously rising.