Membrane technologies applied to textile wastewater treatment.

This paper describes the experimental results of a pilot-scale application of membrane technologies to textile wastewater advanced treatment, downstream of a biological activated sludge process, aimed at water reuse in textile technology processes. The chosen approach consisted of sand filtration as a pretreatment, a microfiltration (MF) or ultrafiltration (UF) membrane process, and a final separation treatment performed by means of a nanofiltration (NF) or a reverse osmosis (RO) membrane. An experimental study to compare spiral wound membranes, operating under pressure, to flat membranes, operating under vacuum was conducted. The technical results and a preliminary economic analysis indicate the possibility of technological transfer of the membrane technologies to an industrial scale for textile wastewater reclamation.