The pulp and paper industry generates vast amounts of
wastewater,
and its character heavily depends on various factors (raw material,
the undertaken process, the final product, etc.). The wastewater from
this sector, which originates from several sources in each mill and
are mostly combined, is polluting and hazardous. This paper presents
a state-of-the-art review of the physical, chemical, biological, and
advanced hybrid treatment techniques, concerning their effectiveness
in removing specific pollutants, namely, chemical oxygen demand, lignin,
color, and adsorbable organo-halogens. Throughout the manuscript,
at the end of each section, a conclusive comparison has been presented
and the proper method is introduced. Furthermore, numeric data regarding
the effectiveness of each technique toward each pollutant are gathered
from the literature and are available in the Supporting Information
of the paper. Biological treatment processes using anaerobic–aerobic
treatment mostly cure organic biodegradable contaminants (75–90%
COD removal). Moreover, biological treatment using a consortium of
microorganisms can potentially increase color removal efficiency (from
65 to 97%). Hybrid treatment is also among the candidates for color
removal. To treat complex matters (lignin and AOX), physical and chemical
treatments have shown promising performance, but they are generally
expensive and impractical to treat huge amounts of wastewater. For
the treatment of high molecular weight contaminants (lignin) advanced
oxidation processes (AOPs), including ozonation and Fenton-based treatment,
have shown great performance (90–99%); however, they are limited
due to their maintenance and operation costs. To overcome these challenges,
source separation of the wastewater streams in the pulp and paper
industry is recommended. AOPs or membrane technologies or hybrid processes
are suggested for the bleaching effluent (80% AOX removal), which
is relatively low in amount, and a combination of conventional treatment
processes would be preferred to treat wastewater streams that are
more biodegradable. The biological performance can also be enhanced
using granular activated carbon on the sequence. Finally, for treating
black liquor, adsorption processes have proven to be the prime candidate.