Treating Industrial water - Dye removal

BACKGROUND : The problem track that we have chosen is Clean Water. We had identified the problem - Contamination of Noyyal River, located in Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu. The noyyal river is polluted and contaminated by nearby industries which draining their used effluents without any pre-treatment. These effluents contain harmful dyes such as methylene blue, malachite green etc., as they are released by some textile industries. These dyes could be removed using the process called adsorption. The materials which are used for the process adsorption is adsorbents. We are proposing this solution because adsorbents are cost effective, readily available, could be made from household bio-degradable wastes and have high efficiency in the removal of dyes from the wastewater when compared to other dye removal methods. The materials to produce the activated carbon are collected from the surrounding environment. It is dried, crushed and heated at high temperature (say 400 degree centigrade). Then add 25% strong acid or base with it and kept it in furnace or oven for 4 hours. Now, the activated carbon is ready to mix with the wastewater. The wastewater and activated carbon is stirred/ mixed well in a tank provided with mechanical mixers. Then the mixed effluent is filtered in a filtration tank. Now the dyes from the effluent is removed to a considerable amount meeting the standards that effluents should contain while draining. The heavy metals present in the wastewater could also be removed using these low cost efficient adsorbents. If required, other treatments like SBR,MBR,MBBR could also be done. Our goal is to wipe out/eradicate dyes from natural water sources.