Colour is the main attraction of any fabric. Manufacture and use of
synthetic dyes from fabric dyeing as therefore become a massive industry today. Use of
synthetic dyes has an adverse effect on all forms of life. Presence of sulphur naphthol, vat
dyes, nitrates, acetic acids, soaps, enzymes, chromium compounds and heavy metals like
copper, arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury, nickel, and cobalt and certain auxiliary
chemicals all collectively make the textile effluent highly toxic. It is important to remove
these pollutants from the waste water before their final disposal. The study was
performed to investigate the concentration of toxic heavy metals like cadmium (Cd) and
Zinc (Zn). It was observed that the concentration of cadmium were much higher than the
maximum permissible limits. Process parameters which include adsorbent dosages, PH
and contact time of solution were varied in order to evaluate their influence on the
adsorption process. The optimum contact time, dosage and PH for carbon with I.R-0.75
was 90 mins, 200mg and 7.00 with removal efficiency of 99.69%, 98.55% and 93.71%
respectively. Hence easy and effective techniques are required for fine tuning of waste
water treatment.