Textile dye wastewater characteristics and constituents of synthetic effluents: a critical review

Textile industries are responsible for one of the major environmental pollution problems in the world, because they release undesirable dye effluents. Textile wastewater contains dyes mixed with various contaminants at a variety of ranges. Therefore, environmental legislation commonly obligates textile factories to treat these effluents before discharge into the receiving watercourses. The treatment efficiency of any pilot-scale study can be examined by feeding the system either with real textile effluents or with artificial wastewater having characteristics, which match typical textile factory discharges. This paper presents a critical review of the currently available literature regarding typical and real characteristics of the textile effluents, and also constituents including chemicals used for preparing simulated textile wastewater containing dye, as well as the treatments applied for treating the prepared effluents. This review collects the scattered information relating to artificial textile wastewater constituents and organises it to help researchers who are required to prepare synthetic wastewater. These ingredients are also evaluated based on the typical characteristics of textile wastewater, and special constituents to simulate these characteristics are recommended. The processes carried out during textile manufacturing and the chemicals corresponding to each process are also discussed.