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Sequential Anaerobic/Aerobic Methods in Dye Elimination

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Advanced Removal Techniques for Dye-containing Wastewaters

Abstract

Almost all the modern dyes widely used in industrial processes like textile, leather, paint, food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical manufacturing are synthetic organic compounds. Dyes are responsible for the dyeing phase of the product of interest, and it has been estimated that the annual synthetic organic dye production exceeds 700,000 tons globally. Dyes can be categorized based on their structure and application: reactive, acid, disperse, vat, and azo dyes are some of those classes. The discharge of these dyes into the environment is a major threat due to the adverse effects such as carcinogenicity, toxicity, and mutagenicity of themselves and their biological transformation products. Therefore, the elimination of dyes from wastewater is a major requirement today, and various types of treatments are available in the world. Some of those methods are physical processes like adsorption and membrane filtration, and chemical processes like coagulation–flocculation and ozonation. The application of these methods has some restrictions such as effectiveness of the dye removal process, need for expensive chemicals/reagents, etc. Yet, the biological processes may exhibit better effectiveness and only require relatively cheaper, environmentally friendly reagents. Azo dyes can be considered as a representative class of dyes for the treatment with biological processes under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. The biodegradation of azo dyes is occurring via two steps; first, the reduction of the azo linkage (favorable under anaerobic conditions) to produce colorless amines and subsequently, further degradation of aromatic amines (favorable in aerobic conditions). The fate of the dyes upon treating with biological processes may vary based on the structure of the organic moiety and the conditions used. Such cases are discussed in this chapter in great detail.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura; Instrument Centre, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura; and Ecosphere Resilience Research Centre, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka, for their support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Gangodawila, Nugegoda, 10250, Sri Lanka

    Kavindya Weerasinghe, Hashini Abeyrathna & Asitha T. Cooray

  2. Faculty of Applied Sciences, Instrument Centre, Office of the Dean, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Gangodawila, Nugegoda, 10250, Sri Lanka

    Sakuni M. De Silva, Asitha T. Cooray & Janitha Walpita

  3. Faculty of Applied Sciences, Ecosphere Resilience Research Centre, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Gangodawila, Nugegoda, 10250, Sri Lanka

    Janitha Walpita

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  1. Kavindya Weerasinghe
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  2. Sakuni M. De Silva
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  3. Hashini Abeyrathna
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Correspondence to Janitha Walpita .

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  1. Head of Sustainability, SgT and API, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu

  2. Islamic Azad University of Shahre Rey Branch, Teheran, Iran

    Ali Khadir

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Weerasinghe, K., De Silva, S.M., Abeyrathna, H., Cooray, A.T., Walpita, J. (2021). Sequential Anaerobic/Aerobic Methods in Dye Elimination. In: Muthu, S.S., Khadir, A. (eds) Advanced Removal Techniques for Dye-containing Wastewaters. Sustainable Textiles: Production, Processing, Manufacturing & Chemistry. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3164-1_9

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