Technologies accessible for major commodity manufacturing industries to mitigate effluents: a comprehensive review to emphasize the disparity between efficiency and life cycle of the process

Industrial activities generate significant volumes of wastewater with various heavy metals, suspended solids, oils, tannins, toxic chemicals, organic and inorganic compounds, often with elevated biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) levels. This study mainly focuses on providing an in-depth review of the characteristics of effluents, available treatment processes, and regulatory frameworks for managing five common commodity manufacturing industry effluents (textile, pulp and paper, dye, leather, and rice mill). All these manufacturing industries consume large amounts of water and subsequently produce tons of effluents. Direct disposal of these effluents in the open environment poses potential hazards to the environment and human health and requires mitigation before discharge. Different conventional technologies are available to treat these effluents, which are associated with certain merits and demerits and highlighted here. The review also emphasized the most frequently applied process technologies to reduce BOD and COD load from the effluents of particular industries, with their limitations. Therefore, assessing economically viable and sustainable wastewater treatment approaches is crucial. It is concluded that conducting cost-benefit analysis in terms of BOD and COD removal efficiency and life cycle assessment is a must to select the most economical and sustainable solutions for the existence of any technology.