Efficacy of Natural Coagulants in Treating Sugar Industry Effluents

Industrial sector is understood to be one of the major offenders in polluting environment particularly water among others. Sugar industry is one among the agro-based industry releasing high organic pollutants rich in BOD. Though conventional treatment methods have been employed in treating sugar industry effluents at varied degrees, they come with their own setbacks. In this direction natural coagulants are explored and evaluated for their potential and efficiency towards treating sugar industry effluents. The process of coagulation and flocculation removes impurities precisely colloidal impurities through the phenomenon of destabilization, bridging and sweep coagulation. In order to have an effective treatment factors governing coagulation are to be optimized to determine the dose, pH, mixing time etc. The prime objective of the present study is to characterize the sugar industry effluents, test the efficiency of both chemical and natural coagulants to treat these effluents and bring out a comparison and potential of natural coagulants with that of chemical coagulants. Jar test apparatus was employed all coagulation studies and the results were promising with reduction in parameters like colour (99.28%), electrical conductivity (60.39%), turbidity (97.67%), chloride (69.23%) and total dissolved solids (60.42%) highest by ferric chloride followed by the natural coagulants. The findings of the study suggest that the lowest dose of 0.25g/l was optimum to remove the physico-chemical parameters both by chemical and natural coagulants and since natural coagulants were equally competent with chemical coagulants these can be substituted towards achieving green treatment options.