Abstract:
Advanced waste water treatment techniques such as adsorption are economically and
environmentally essential in the removal of non-biodegradable toxic compounds from industrial
wastewater. The research study focuses on the use of rice husk ash to treat textile waste water.
Samples of textile wastewater were collected from the final clarifier of Fine spinners Uganda
LTD and rice husks were got from local rice milling machines in Busitema trading centre, Batch
tests were performed to investigate the use of rice husk ash as a potential adsorbent for dyes.
Adsorption capacity was found to vary with PH, temperature; adsorbent dosage and contact time,
the adsorbent was analysed by using FT-IR analysis technique which was done at Uganda
Industrial Research Institute laboratories. The experimental result shows that RHA has good
potential to remove dyes from effluent and good potential as an alternative low cost adsorbent.
Experiments were carried out in triplicates and average value computed for each. The volume of
wastewater samples were kept constant throughout all experiments at250mls. Initial conditions of
the wastewater were measured and found to be concentration of 10000g/litre, temperature of
26°C and pH of 6. In all experiments, a sample of original wastewater was included, to which 110
RHA added so as to act as a blank solution. This was meant to be a control experiment and
confirm that the observed results in actual experiment are actually due to the presence of the
adsorbent, RHA and as well investigate whether there was any adsorption at the walls of the
conical flasks. The alternative experiments had adsorbent RHA added to the wastewater to act as
actual experiment. From the experimental Investigations the maximum percentage removal for
dyes in textile industrial wastewater was calculated and obtained at an optimum bio-adsorbent
dosage of 20mg, an optimum contact time of 15O minutes an optimum temperature of 40°C and
an optimum pH of 5. The combination of optimum conditions yielded a percentage removal of
93.03% which is promising. The results obtained can help to design an appropriate wastewater
treatment plant to minimize the adverse impacts caused by textile industrial wastewater.
