The utilization of dyes in textile industries has enormously increased in recent years and has created several environmental problems. Currently, several methods are in practice to treat wastewaters. Effective and efficient treatment techniques before the discharge of used water in the environment are the need of the hour. This short review covers the research and recent developments in advanced wastewater treatment techniques such as nanophotocatalysis, ceramic nanofiltration membranes, and biofilms. The primary intent of this review article is to contribute the ready-made references for the active researchers and scientists working in the field of wastewater treatment. This review has mainly focused on advanced physico-chemical and biological techniques for the treatment of textile dye wastewaters. Further, the influence of various operating factors on the treatment, advantages, and disadvantages of various techniques was also discussed. The recently developed materials for wastewater treatment are also summarized based on the latest available literature. Graphic

The present investigation is focused on development of aerobic biofilm on tire derived rubber (TDR) media and then evaluation of such system for bioremediation of Methylene blue (MB) dye for 9 weeks. After 9 weeks of operation, the COD, BOD, ammonia and color values have been declined by 89.2, 98.3, 99.61 and 99.81% respectively, While SEM-EDX results showed a variance in weight percent of various elements in TDR without biofilm i.e. raw TDR media, as well as in the 1^st and 9^th week samples. Moreover, fine and strong peaks were observed in both the MB simulated wastewater and 9^th week TDR samples at 1190, 1300, 1400, 1450, 1500 and 1618 cm^-1 respectively by Raman Spectroscopic analysis. Further, FTIR analysis was performed for the MB simulated wastewater, and absorbance peaks ranging from 1591 to 1363 cm^-1 and 3410 cm^-1 were observed in all the samples with different intensities. To assess the biodeterioration of the TDR media, ATR was performed for the raw, 1^st, 2^nd and 9^th week TDR media samples and in the raw TDR, two important bands, 842 and 2962 cm⁻¹ were noticed representing –CH = CH and –CH₃. A clear variation of bands and peak intensities were observed in different support media samples. The results indicate that TDR media is a resilient, chemically resistant material and could be employed for the biofilm growth for biological treatment of textile dye wastewater.

The present research is focused on the application of glass beads (GBs) in fixed biofilm reactor (FBR) for the treatment of simulated methylene blue (MB) wastewater for 9 weeks under aerobic conditions. The COD of MB wastewater showed a reduction of 86.48% from 2000 to 270.4 mg/L, and BOD was declined up to 97.7% from 1095.5 to 25.03 mg/L. A drastic increase in the pH was observed until the 3rd week (8.5 to 8.28), and later, marginal changes between 8.30 ± 0.02 were noticed. A dramatic fluctuation was observed in ammonia concentration which increased (74.25 mg/L) up till the 2nd week, and from the 3rd week it started declining. In the 9th week, the ammonia concentration dropped to 16.5 mg/L. The color intensity increased significantly up till the 2nd week (259,237.46 Pt/Co) of the experiment and started decreasing slowly thereafter. The SEM–EDX analysis has shown the maximum quantity of carbon content in the GBs without biofilm, and then in the GB samples of 1st, and 9th-week old aerobic biofilms. Furthermore, Raman spectroscopy results revealed that the 9th-week GBs has a fine and strong MB peak and matched with that of the MB stock solution. Overall, the results have shown that the GBs filter media were suitable for the development of active biofilm communities for the treatment of dye wastewater. Thus, GBs-FBR system can be used for wastewater treatment to solve the current problem of industrial pollution in many countries and to protect the aquatic environment from dye pollution caused by the textile industry.