Plasma in textile wastewater treatment

Potable water scarcity is a foreseen inevitability due to the global growing population, climate change, and continuous anthropogenic contamination of this vital good with recalcitrant hazardous compounds. Textile industry represents one of the main polluting industries in the world, particularly due to the contamination of massive amounts of water with hazardous chemicals. Spearheading these contaminants are the dyes used to color our indispensable everyday textile commodities, which are extremely hard to degrade through conventional chemical and biological wastewater treatments. Nevertheless, advanced oxidation processes, in particular plasma treatments have displayed an impressive near total degradation at considerable treatment rates. Their efficacy is focused on the stable and considerable production of reactive species that promptly mineralize the wastewater pollutants. Several studies performed using plasma technologies in the treatment of both simulated and real textile industry effluents clearly support the viability of the implementation of this technology to successfully safeguard the environment from an ill-reputed industry.