Treatment of rubber industry wastewater review: Recent advances and future prospects

With rapid industrialization, enormous amounts of wastewater have been released from the rubber industry into the environment from different industrial processes such as latex concentrate and standard block rubber. The rubber industry wastewater must be treated before discharge into common water bodies. This review paper presents the recent advances in treatment methods for rubber industry wastewater, particularly in biological processes, membrane processes, coagulation-flocculation, and advanced oxidation processes. Besides, this review paper discovers more about the potential of integrated methods which apply the synergetic effectiveness of processes to achieve the recycling of treated wastewater and the sustainable development of water resources. Special emphasis has been laid upon the type of rubber industry wastewater, operating condition, and perfor-mance of the treatment methods along with their pros and cons. Selection of appropriate treatment strategy lies on the feedwater conditions, site restriction, water requirement, stability of treatment process, cost-effectiveness, energy efficiency, and environmental friendliness. Despite many treatment methods presenting superior per-formance, many of them possess limitations and have not progressed to the industrial scale. Lastly, challenges and future perspectives in developing treatment technology for rubber industry wastewater are proposed to achieve sustainable and integrated water management.