IIT Jodhpur has unveiled a pioneering technique for treating wastewater from the textile dyeing industry, notorious for releasing harmful substances like azo dyes into the environment.
This new method leverages environmentally friendly far ultraviolet (UV) light at 222 nm, offering significant advantages over conventional mercury-based UV light at 254 nm. The textile dyeing and manufacturing industry produces large quantities of wastewater containing persistent contaminants like azo dyes, which are challenging to remove using conventional methods.
Effective treatment of this wastewater is crucial to prevent environmental pollution and promote sustainable water reuse. Researchers at IIT Jodhpur, led by Dr Ram Prakash, Professor in the Department of Physics, have developed a novel approach using a 222 nm Kr/Cl2 excimer UV light source. Their method has shown remarkable effectiveness in breaking down Reactive Black 5 (RB5), a common dye in textile wastewater.
The study, published recently in Nature Scientific Reports explored both direct photolysis and an advanced oxidation process (AOP) using titanium dioxide (TiO2) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The degradation rate of RB5 was found to be approximately 27 times faster with their designed excimer-222 light and H2O2 AOP compared to conventional UV-C based methods.
The team at IIT Jodhpur plans to conduct further research to optimise the process and explore its application in real-world industrial settings. Additionally, they aim to investigate the use of far UV-C light for other environmental cleanup operations and sustainable agricultural practices.
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