Textile, printing, and dyeing industries in China are expanding annually, resulting in the discharge of significant volumes of wastewater. These effluents have complex compositions and contain diverse pollutants that pose severe hazards to aquatic systems, ecological environments, and nearby flora, fauna, and human populations. The inadequate or rudimentary treatment of these effluents can cause substantial environmental damage. Current technologies for treating textile dyeing wastewater (TDW) include physical, chemical, and biological methods, with biological treatment being noted for its low cost and environmental sustainability. In the realm of biotechnological treatment, microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, and algae, exhibit significant potential. This review highlights the urgent need for effective treatment of textile dyeing wastewater (TDW), which poses severe environmental and health risks. It provides a comparative analysis of physical, chemical, and biological treatment methods, with a focus on the unique advantages of biological approaches, such as biodegradation and biosorption, for sustainable wastewater management. Key findings include recent advancements in microbial applications, challenges in scaling up, and integration into existing treatment systems. This review aims to guide future research and practical applications in achieving eco-friendly and cost-effective solutions for TDW remediation.

As highly toxic and carcinogenic substances, antimony and arsenic often coexist and cause compound pollution. Heavy metal pollution in water significantly threatens human health and the ecological environment. This article elaborates on the sources and hazards of compound antimony and arsenic contamination and systematically discusses the research progress of treatment technology to remove antimony and arsenic in water. Due to the advantages of simple operation, high removal efficiency, low economic cost, and renewable solid and sustainable utilization, adsorption technology for removing antimony and arsenic from sewage stand out among many treatment technologies. The adsorption performance of adsorbent materials is the key to removing antimony and arsenic in water. Therefore, this article focused on summarizing frontier adsorption materials’ characteristics, adsorption mechanism, and performance, including MOFs, COFs, graphene, and biomass materials. Then, the research and application progress of antimony and arsenic removal by frontier materials were described. The adsorption effects of various frontier adsorption materials were objectively analyzed and comparatively evaluated. Finally, the characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages of various frontier adsorption materials in removing antimony and arsenic from water were summarized to provide ideas for improving and innovating adsorption materials for water pollution treatment.

The transport and prediction of hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) contamination in “slag–soil–groundwater” is one with many uncertainties. Based on the column experiments, a migration model for Cr(VI) in the slag–soil–groundwater system was investigated. The hydraulic conductivity (Kt), distribution coefficient (Kd), retardation factor (Rd), and other hydraulic parameters were estimated in a laboratory. Combining these hydraulic parameters with available geological and hydrogeological data for the study area, the groundwater flow and Cr(VI) migration model were developed for assessing groundwater contamination. Subsequently, a Cr(VI) migration model was developed to simulate the transport of Cr(VI) in the slag–soil–groundwater system and predict the effect of three different control programs for groundwater contamination. The results showed that the differences in the measured and predicted groundwater head values were all less than 3 m. The maximum and minimum differences in Cr(VI) between the measured and simulated values were 1.158 and 0.001 mg/L, respectively. Moreover, the harmless treatment of Cr(VI) slag considerably improved the quality of groundwater in the surrounding areas. The results of this study provided a reliable mathematical model for transport process analysis and prediction of Cr(VI) contamination in a slag–soil–groundwater system.

Electroplating wastewater treatment is governed not only by total heavy-metal concentrations but also by metal speciation, organic complexation, salinity, intermittent discharge, and increasingly stringent requirements for water reuse and metal recovery. This review reframes recent advances from a removal-efficiency-centered perspective to a speciation-driven and resource-oriented framework. Treatment technologies are evaluated according to their dominant mechanisms, including precipitation and phase transfer, ligand destruction and redox conversion, selective separation, electrochemical recovery, biological transformation, and hybrid process integration. Attention is paid to the fate of metals after treatment, the management of sludge, regenerants, and membrane concentrates, and trade-offs among removal efficiency, resource recovery, energy and chemical demand, operational stability, and engineering applicability. The analysis indicates that no single technology is likely to simultaneously address complexation, high salinity, membrane fouling, biological inhibition, and low-carbon operation. Future systems should therefore integrate source-separated collection, speciation-targeted pretreatment, selective metal recovery, water reuse, concentrate management, and digitally assisted process control. This review provides a mechanistic and decision-oriented framework for designing sustainable electroplating wastewater treatment systems beyond conventional end-of-pipe removal.