Separation of Organic Dyes from Wastewater by Using Colloidal Gas Aphrons

Abstract
Auxiliary chemicals used in the preparation of water-based dyes have been reported to pose problems in conventional wastewater treatment processes. The dye manufacturing industries have to find alternate wastewater treatment processes to remove dyes from their waste effluents. This paper investigates a novel method of separation of dyes by flotation using colloidal gas aphrons (CGAs). The results indicate that this is an effective method for the separation of synthetic dyes from wastewater. The mechanism of removal has been shown to be ion coupling of the oppositely charged species of the surfactant forming the CGA and the dye and flotation of the ion-dye complex on the surface of CGA microbubbles.