Treatment of Textile Finishing Wastes by
Surface Aeration
GEORGE A. RHAME, Chief
Water Pollution Control
South Carolina Pollution Control Authority
Columbia, South Carolina
INTRODUCTION
The State of South Carolina, as many of you may know, is blessed with a
considerable number of textile finishing plants engaged in producing a wide variety
of yard goods. Yardage amounts to a very substantial portion of the entire United
States production. The bulk of this production results in a wastewater characterized
by high pH, high BOD and much color.
Waste treatment efforts of 20 years ago largely centered around anaerobic
lagoons in South Carolina. There was much agitation over methods for inplant
reduction of BOD. Eventual realization of the importance of C02 production by the
treatment process as a method of reducing pH has changed this attitude somewhat.
The introduction of biological waste treatment using long aeration periods and
surface aerators has brought about a great improvement in the treatment of textile
finishing wastes. I will not attempt to review the history of this development, much
of which has been presented at this conference. This paper will present some of the
data collected by the staff of the South Carolina Pollution Control Authority in the
course of its regular surveillance work. In many cases the treatment plants are
deficient in flow metering and reported hydraulic loads are based on water
consumption. A number of suspicious looking reports are not used here.
TREATMENT SYSTEMS
Treatment systems, in general, usually fall into three types (Figure 1).
Type A-raw waste enters the aeration basin, is aerated and discharged without
further treatment.
Type B—wastes leaving the aeration basin enters a large shallow lagoon for
sedimentation and additional biological decomposition.
Type C—wastes leaving the aeration basin enters a conventional sedimentation
tank equipped with a sludge removal mechanism. Collected sludge is returned to the
aeration basin. (Do not return to the raw waste stream) Return rate is generally 100
percent of design raw waste flow.
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