Coagulation and Flocculation of Industrial Wastewater by Chitosan

Dr L.Nageswara Rao

While Textile Effluent is discarding in to the nearby water bodies becomes a significant threat to Environment mostly to the aquatic life. The objectionable properties like turbidity, strong color, strong odor, toxicity and alkalinity etc. Coagulation and flocculation is simple and rapid technique. This is most often used pretreatment technique to treat the effluent. Aluminum sulfate (alum), ferrous sulfate, ferric chloride and ferric chloro-sulfate were commonly used as coagulants. However, a possible link of Alzheimer’s disease with conventional aluminum based coagulants has become an issue in wastewater treatment. Hence, special attention has shift towards using biodegradable polymer, chitosan in treatment, which are more environmental friendly. Moreover, chitosan is natural organic polyelectrolyte of high molecular weight and high charge density which obtained from deacetylation of chitin. The experiment was carried out on textile industry wastewater by varying the operating parameters, which are chitosan dosage, pH and mixing time in order to study their effect in flocculation process by using chitosan.