Khalida Muda, Azmi Aris, Mohd Razman Salim and Zaharah Ibrahim

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter http://dx. doi. org/10.5772/54458

1. Introduction

The textile industry involves a long chain of complex activities, from processing raw materials up to finishing the fabrics. These industries have created job opportunities to millions of people and have become one of the major incomes to many countries in the world. Unfortunately, the industry is also one of the major contributors to water pollution. The textile wastewater contains not only the colorant, which is one of the main pollutants, but also other chemicals that are added throughout the textile processing. The dye compounds present in textile wastewater are able to impose a major impact to a receiving water body even in small quantities.

Due to the non-biodegradable nature of textile wastewater, a conventional aerobic biological process is incapable of treating the wastewater. For a complete degradation of textile wastewater, a combination of anaerobic and aerobic reaction phases is necessary.

This chapter briefly reviews the characteristics of textile wastewater and available technologies. This is followed by an in-depth discussion on biogranulation technology and the application of a hybrid biogranular system in treating the textile wastewater.