The textile industry is very diverse, heterogeneous, and characterized by high consumption of water, fuel, and chemicals. Environmental problems are mainly associated with wastewater. With regard to globalization and scarcity of water, wastewater treatment and recycling possibilities in the textile industry are of the highest importance. In this chapter, raw materials and processes used in textile industry are briefly discussed, with special attention given to characteristics of textile water supply and wastewater produced from different process steps. The general characteristics of textile wastewater and wastewater-treatment technologies are described and reuse possibilities are discussed.
COBISS.SI-ID: 14770966
Molecular encapsulation involves all intermolecular interactions where covalent bonds are not established between the interacting species. Among all potential hosts, the cyclodextrins (CDs) are to be the most important for the following reasons: (1) CDs are seminatural products; they are produced from a renewable natural material, starch, by a relatively simple enzymatic conversion. (2) They are produced in thousands of tons per year by environmentally friendly technologies. (3) Because of their huge production, the initially high prices of CDs have dropped to levels where they become acceptable for most industrial purposes. (4) CDs can form inclusion complexes with various small molecules. This "molecular encapsulation" is already widely utilized in many industrial products, technologies, and analytical methods. (5) In general, CDs are not toxic, but any of their toxic effect is of secondary character and can be eliminated by selecting the appropriate CD type or derivative or mode of application. (6) As a result of point 5, CDs can be consumed by humans as ingredients of drugs, foods, or cosmetics. Cyclodextrins are cyclic oligosaccharides, they are macrocyclic compounds built from glucopyranose units. CDs can be used as dyeing auxiliaries that improve dye adsorption onto fibres, increasing solubility and affinity of the CD-complex with fibres or they can be grafted onto textile materials by using crosslinking reagents or by the introduction of reactive groups in CD’s structure.
COBISS.SI-ID: 15601174