Tratamiento de aguas residuales y problemáticas ambientales del sector textil en Colombia: una revisión.

The textile industry represents a decisive figure due to the negative impacts generated by its production processes on the quality of water, air, soil, and waste management. In particular, there is great concern about water resources, due to the quantities and types of chemicals used by this industry. For this reason, this article reviews the problems of wastewater from the textile industry and the technological advances for its treatment. As a result, it is found that small and medium-sized companies correspond to the most vulnerable sector in terms of their capacity to face the growing social, regulatory, and fiscal pressure in environmental matters, with needs for environmental goods and services that are increasing due to the informality of many companies, which, therefore, are not subject to any type of control by the environmental authorities. Different textile wastewater treatment methodologies were identified, including combined techniques such as electrocoagulation and electro-oxidation, advanced oxidation processes (PAO), Fenton (H2O/Fe2+) or photo-Fenton (UV/H2O2/Fe2+), among others, which guarantee high performance in the elimination, for example, of parameters such as chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and color. In addition, the use of titania nanomaterials as good adsorbents of metals such as lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and nickel (Ni) and, as a low-cost alternative for small companies, waste materials, and minerals as good adsorbents of dyes, which can be reused with high efficiencies in several cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]