New technology developed to use aluminium waste for waste-water-management

According to a report on August 18, a revolutionary filter technology has been developed in Sri Lanka that creatively uses the waste from aluminium anodising to treat the waste water from the textile industry.

An agreement has also been signed between Twinery, the innovation arm of MAS Holding, and Colombo Science and Technology Cell of the University of Colombo to implement the revolutionary process at the MAS Fabric Park.

The research was funded by Twinery and conducted in collaboration with the Colombo Cell and MAS teams.

The process took eight months for being developed through a series of undergraduate research projects in the Department of Physics of the University of Colombo.

Explaining the idea behind the project, Dr. Dilushan Jayasundera, Principal Investigator of the project and Senior Lecturer of the University of Colombo, said, “The idea was to convert sludge from the aluminium industry as a filter material to treat the waste-water from the apparel industry.”

Consultant and Senior Lecturer (Chemistry) of the University of Colombo, Dr. Shashiprabha Vithanarachchi said, “The textile industry currently uses costly agents to treat wastewater to ensure that it is meeting stringent local and international standards. The dissolving stage of the aluminium sludge generates AlOH which is used for the adsorption-coagulation effects that is used for the filtration process while the inert matter is allowed to settle and is used for the exiting MAS eco brick process.”