Asia Pacific Environmental and Occupational Health Journal

Introduction: Textile industry is known as one of the generators that produced a large amount of wastewater pollutants due to the large quantities of water consumed during fabric processing.

Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the potential of eggshells as adsorbent for removal of pollutants from the textile industry wastewater without treatment.

Methodology: The wastewater sampling at the selected area was conducted to identify the characteristics of the wastewater and compare the sample with Environmental Quality (Sewage and Industrial Effluent) Regulations 1974. Therefore, alternative treatment such as adsorption by using eggshell was investigated with different variables.

Result: Based on the result, the wastewater does have a high reading of turbidity, high concentrations of BOD and COD, highly coloured effluents and heavy metals. All the characteristics of textile wastewater violated the permissible limit standard. The optimum condition in the removal of heavy metals and dyes by using eggshell was obtained. As for lead (Pb) and copper (Cu) show the highest percentages of removal up to 100% followed by the manganese (Mn) and zinc (Zn) which is 91% and 62% respectively. Meanwhile, the removal percentage for the dyes is 80%

Conclusion: This study concluded that the textile wastewater containing high concentrations of pollutant including the heavy metals and dyes. In the study, the efficiency of the eggshell powder as adsorbent was identified.

Keywords: Adsorption, eggshell, dyes, heavy metals, textile wastewater