The treatment and reusing technology of printing and

dyeing wastewater

YI Xuenong
School of Environment and Architecture
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology
Shanghai, China
Zhang Yansen
School of Environment and Architecture
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology
Shanghai, China


AbstractA kind of technology and process of treating printing
and dyeing wastewater with high efficiency and low energy
consumption was presented. Based on the analysis of the current
methods this article summed up the more practical way,
combining theory with practice, to provide some references for
the similar projects.
Keywords-printing and dyeing wastewater; treatment
technology; polyvinyl alcohol PVA; wastewater reusing
The printing and dyeing wastewater is a major part of
textile printing industrial wastewater .In recent years, as the
rapid development of dyestuff industry and finishing
technology, new additives, dyes, finishing agents are widely
used in the printing and dyeing industry .In the wastewater
more and more poisonous organic compound are found, and
even some organic matter are carcinogenic, mutagenic, cause
distortion, which has done mankind a great disservice. China
is one of the countries that struggle with serious problems
about water shortage and water pollution .As the water crisis
increasingly, more attention must be paid to reduce pollutant
emissions from the every printing and dyeing processes, use
of clean production technologies, recycle of wastewater,
which are of great political and economic significance for
alleviating the water crisis and maintaining sustainable
development.
1 The characteristics and hazards of printing and dyeing
wastewater
According to their sources, printing and dyeing wastewater
pollutants can be divided into two categories: one is from
entrainment material of the fiber material; the other is used in
the processing of slurry, oil, dyes, chemical additives, etc. The
characteristics of printing and dyeing wastewater are complex
composition, high organic matter content , color depth, high
chemical oxygen demand ,relatively low biochemical oxygen
demand ,poor biodegradability and large emissions , etc.
1.1Hazards to human health
1.1.1 Cause acute and chronic poisoning
Printing and dyeing wastewater sometimes contains heavy
metal salts which are difficult to degrade using normal
biochemical methods, thus they can long-stand in the natural
environment and endanger human health through the food
chain and so on
[1]
. So that the human body poisoning, such as
methyl mercury poisoning (Mina Mata disease), cadmium
poisoning (Itai-itai disease), arsenic poisoning, chromium
poisoning, cyanide poisoning, pesticide poisoning. Of lead,
barium, fluoride can also cause harm to human health. These
acute and chronic poisoning is the main aspects of causing
serious harm to human health.
1.1.2 Carcinogenesis
Printing and dyeing wastewater contains benzene, amine,
pyrene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, halogenated
hydrocarbons and other organic pollutants
[2]
. All these
materials can be accumulated in suspended solids, sediments
and aquatic organisms. Long-term consumption of water or
food containing these substances may induce cancer. Printing
and dyeing industry use a large amount of Chromium
relatively: dyeing industry often uses it as an oxidant and
potassium dichromate mordant; the preparation of printing
rollers consumes a large amount of Chromium .Chromium has
also been confirmed to cause cancer, we should pay particular
attention to its emissions and utilization.
1.2 The harm to the environment
It is estimated that more than 50 million tons of textile dyes
are used all over the world. A large number of wastewater
brought by the process of printing and dyeing is discharged
into the rivers, lakes, seas and surface water. The dye in the
wastewater can absorb light, reducing the transparency of
water and affecting the growth of aquatic life and microbial,
which is not conducive to self-purification of water.
Meantime it is easy to create visual pollution and also severe
pollution of water can affect human health. The pollutions and
emissions must be strictly controlled for those things like
resin finishing agent, organic metal flame retardants and
978-1-4244-4713-8/10/$25.00 2010 IEEE

waterproofing agents containing cadmium which can easily
produce formaldehyde, resulting in badly contaminated but
difficult to treat by the traditional methods.
2 The treatment technology of printing and dyeing
wastewater
2.1 The traditional treatment process and its improvement
2.1.1 Adsorption process
The most widely used physical approaches the adsorption
process. Activated carbon, clay, porous material such as
powder or granules are mixed with water ,or let water through
filter bed composed with granular material, so that waste
water pollutants are adsorbed on the surface of porous
material or filtered to remove . The method for the removal of
dissolved organic matter in waste water is very effective, but
can not remove the water and the hydrophobic colloidal dyes.
2.1.2 Coagulation treatment
They are of two main Methods, flotation and r coagulating
sedimentation. in which the mostly used Coagulant is
aluminum or iron salt-based. The main advantages of
coagulation process is simple, easy operation and
management, equipment investment, covering an small area ,
with high hydrophobic dye decolonization efficiency ;
drawback is that operating costs are relatively high ,sludge
with high water, poor performance and child care, the
treatment effect on the hydrophilic dye worse.
2.1.3 Biological treatment method
Biological treatment methods include aerobic and anaerobic
method. Currently the main method used is aerobic dyeing
wastewater treatment. Aerobic is divided into aerobic and
biofilm process. A large number of organic materials are
decomposed by activated sludge, also part of the color. You
can also fine-tune the PH value, operating efficiency and low
cost, water quality is better suited to deal with a high organic
content printing and dyeing wastewater; biofilm
Decolonization of dyeing wastewater higher than the activated
sludge process. Contact oxidation method is a kind of biofilm
characteristics of activated sludge method, the equivalent of
adding aeration tank filling, so filling the surface covered with
a variety of biofilm in the biofilm, the wastewater at the same
time there is a certain amount of suspension the activated
sludge and biofilm detachment, so that waste water to be
purified.
2.2 New treatment technology
2.2.1 Photochemical oxidation
The advantages of photochemical oxidation are with the
mild reaction conditions (ambient temperature and pressure),
oxidation ability and speed Photochemical oxidation can be
divided into light decomposition, photosensitizing oxidation,
light-induced oxidation and photo catalytic oxidation. Among
them, the present study is more photo catalytic oxidation. The
research on dyes of photo catalytic degradation is focused on
photo catalyst. Some iron ligand compounds have
photochemical activity. They can be used to degrate organic
compounds. TiO2 is a ideal photo catalyst because of is
stabilization insoluble innocuity etc. The traditional
powder TiO2 is hard to use in practice, because it does not
suit to flow system and hard to separate.
2.2.2 Membrane technology
The technology disposals the wastewater by separating
concentratingrecycling. The membrane technology includes
micro filtration membrane ultra filtration membrane
nanometer membrane and RO membrane. Membrane
technology does not need to plus chemical reagents, in the
process, it does not produce secondary pollution; the process
is simple to operate, it can be carried out under atmospheric
pressure with low energy consumption; some salts and dyes
can be recycled from the wastewater and be reused; The
treated wastewater can be directly reused, reducing waste
emissions. But the membrane technology also exists some
problems, such as membrane fouling, membrane flux,
membrane cleaning and the resistance to acid and alkali of the
membrane, etc.
3 The treatment methods of PVA in printing and dyeing
wastewater
The process of printing and dyeing wastewater includes:
desizing, scouring, bleaching, mercerization, dyeing, printing
and finishing, etc. The most pollutants in printing and dyeing
wastewater are from the slurries of the process of sizing,
mainly PVA slurry. PVA is a kind of organic macromolecular
compounds that is difficult to biochemical degradation, and it
is also an important micro-organisms immobilized material.
Recently, because of its increasing usage, the environmental
problems that PVA causes become increasingly serious. Many
experts and scholars at home and abroad are studying the
treatment methods of PVA wastewater and have made a series
of results
[3]
.
3.1 Membrane technology
As is introduced above, membrane separation method is a
method that uses micro porous membrane to filter and
separates the certain substances in the wastewater by the
Selective permeability of the membrane. Feng Bing-ling used
chitosan ultra filtration membrane to treat printing and dyeing
wastewater, the removal rate of COD could reach about 80%,
the decolonization rate exceeded 95%
[4]
.
3.2 Ozone oxidation technology

This method is using ozone to degrade the PVA, the
process is: A long-chain between the molecules cut and the
molecules break into small molecules, so the rate of the
BOD
5
/COD increase, which is favorable to the follow up
biochemical treatment. In the actual operation, it does not just
use the ozone, but also together use other enhanced
technologies, such as ultrasound wave, UV and so on. The
results of an experiment show that, after 12 min treatment, the
degradation rate of PVA with O3/ultrasound, O3/UV synergy
is more improved than directly under the O3 oxidation,
showing a good synergistic effect
[5]
.
3.3 Chemical condensation technology
PVA is a non-ionic organic polymers, the adsorption of
some electric charge produced by the traditional coagulants is
very weak, merely has no effect to the degradation of PVA. In
the case of containing more salts, salting-out effect makes
PVA separate out. At the same time, borax and PVA
molecules start up double-diol-type combination
[6]
. The
experiments show that under the combined effect of the borax
cross linking and Salting-out reaction, the PVA in the
wastewater can be separated out as the gel forms, so as to
achieve the purpose of recycling.
3.4 Biodegradation technology
Although the biodegradability of waste water that contains
PVA is poor, PVA can be degraded under the effect of some
enzymes. As early as 1936, people found PVA can be
degraded into carbon dioxide and water under the effect of the
fungus Fusarium. Using highly efficient degradation bacteria
to deal with PVA-containing wastewater is through screening
and domestication PVA-degrading bacteria, to achieve the
PVA completely biodegradable. As is reported, PVA-
degrading bacteria include pseudomonas, brevibacterium,
etc
[7]
. The PVA-degrading enzymes isolated from these
degrading bacteria include sec-alcohol oxidase polyvinyl
alcohol dehydrogenaseB-diketone hydrolase, etc.
4 Printing and dyeing wastewater reuse technology
In order to meet the future demand for printing and dyeing
industry, we must strength the protection, management and
use of existing water resources
[8]
. Improve the reuse ratio of
water and development of new water sources can greatly
alleviate the contradiction of the water supply and demand to
reduce effluent emissions and the existing water pollution.
The printing and dyeing wastewater reuse technologies
include :AdsorptionCoagulationChemical Oxidation
Electrochemical Biological treatment Photochemical
oxidation Membrane technology Ultrasound
technologyHigh-energy physics method and so on.
The development direction of the reuse of printing and
dyeing wastewater has two paths: Emphasis on the promotion
of the comprehensive management of the waster water and
continuous optimization of the wastewater reuse program
[9].

In the design of water-recycling facility we should
calibrate the maximum dosage. Water desalination is an
important factor for maintaining balance of circulation system,
ensuring product quality and stable operation of the sewage
system. If not, the largest recycling dosage should be in
control within 30%.
5 Pilot scale study
The process printing and dyeing wastewater treatment is
further introduced in company in Liaoning Province, which
has the similar technics .
5.1 Process of treatment
The investigation shows that concentrations of pollutants in
the production process are very high, especially ,PVA ,which
is as high as 14000mg/L. We apply the chemical treatment-
anaerobic treatment -aerobic treatment process in order to
effectively reduce concentrations of pollutants, which can
obtain good effects. First, it is the pretreatment of biochemical
treatment and that is coagulation with the use of PAM. PVA
residual concentration with different dosage of PAM is in
Table1.( the assumption price of PAM in the market is 20000
Yuan/ton)
Table1 Record of experimental data
concentration
of PAM
5 3 1
0.5

0.1

0.05


residual
concentration
of PVA
mg/L
4900 6100 7250 8700 9500 10000

cost of PAM
Yuan
1000 600 200 100 20 10
From the table above we know concentration of PAM and
residual concentration of PVA are inverse ratio while cost of
PAM and concentration of PAM are direct proportion.
Considering the high gremoval efficiency of the pollutants in
the follow-up biological treatment we choose 0.5 as optical
concentration. Route of process is seen in fig 1:
Fig.1 Process of treating PVA-contained wastewater and reusing
raw water

regulation tank
mechanic reactor
anaerobic tank aerobic tank secondary
sedimentation tank
effluent
PAM
returned sludge

5.2 Interpretation of process of treatment
Sewage generated from the production process firstly flow
into regulation tank, which is responsible for storage and
regulation of wastewater to ensure the stable quality and
quantity of wastewater. Then it reaches mechanical reactor
after the addition of
polyaluminium chloride(shortened from PAC).There is a
series of physical and chemical reactions with the help of
mechanical agitation, which also can reduce pollution
concentration greatly, especially PVA, at the same time. The
anaerobic tank is mainly for decomposing macromolecular
organic into macromolecule organic through the metabolism
of anaerobe, which is good for follow-up treatment. Aerobic
pool is to further decompose macromolecules organics so as
to make effluent up to standard. Finally it flows into
secondary sedimentation tank, separating sludge from effluent.
A part of the sludge will flow back to anaerobic tank and
aerobic pool, other is for beneficial utilization
[10]
.
5.3 Treatment effect
After the normal operation of the equipment, recycling rate
of PVA and removal rate of COD can arrive at approximately
80 percent, which decrease concentration of PVA immensely.
It plays a key role in improving the overall treatment effect of
printing and dyeing wastewater and making effluent meets the
standard.
6 Conclusion
From the result of study and discussion above, the proposed
method and technology is feasible for treating the printing
and dyeing wastewater . First we apply phy-chemical method
to treat wastewater of PVA, which can effectively low cost
and investment, decrease treatment load of subsequent
processing structures, increase biodegradability of wastewater.
It can also create conditions for subsequent aerobic and
anaerobic wastewater treatment to obtain higher efficiency.
We are able to enable effluent up to national standard making
use of this technique although initial concentration is as high
as 14000mg/L. Whats more, anaerobic process can produce
biogas, which can be used as new energy and reduce the harm
on environment. At last, the project is set up with recycling
process. Recycling water can be used for landscape irrigation
and production process, which can save precise water and
reduce production cost. Anyhow this technique can gain good
economic benefit and social benefit, and have some
promotional value and application prospects.

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