The industrial laundry sector is a major user of water and chemicals such as surfactants, and one of the largest producers of wastewater. Although treated wastewaters comply with regulations, they still contain contaminants. Here we review laundry wastewater with focus on industrial laundry activities and their challenges, chemical composition of wastewater, and treatment techniques. We discuss advantages and drawbacks of treatment techniques that can be used as secondary treatment in already existing plants, or as tertiary treatment, i.e., complementary to an existing treatment. We observe that laundry is an expanding industrial sector with increasing water requirements, an abundant use of chemical substances, and increasingly stringent discharge regulations. There is a lack of chemical and biological knowledge on aqueous discharges. Moreover, the chemical composition, temporal variability, treatment information, and environmental and ecotoxicological data are poorly reported. The composition of wastewaters and additives, and their temporal variability are also poorly known. Similarly, detailed information on treatments is rare, and environmental and ecotoxicological data are poorly reported. Finding a tertiary water treatment process that is efficient, viable, and environmentally friendly is challenging since wastewater volumes are very high and contaminants are present at trace level in complex organo-mineral mixtures.

工业洗衣行业是水和表面活性剂等化学品的主要用户，也是最大的废水产生者之一。尽管处理后的废水符合规定，但它们仍然含有污染物。在这里，我们回顾洗衣废水，重点关注工业洗衣活动及其挑战、废水的化学成分和处理技术。我们讨论了可在现有工厂中用作二级处理或三级处理（即对现有处理的补充）的处理技术的优点和缺点。我们观察到，洗衣业是一个不断扩大的工业部门，对水的需求不断增加，化学物质的大量使用以及日益严格的排放法规。缺乏有关水性排放物的化学和生物学知识。此外，化学成分、时间变化、处理信息以及环境和生态毒理学数据的报道很少。废水和添加剂的成分及其随时间的变化也知之甚少。同样，有关治疗的详细信息也很少，环境和生态毒理学数据的报告也很少。由于废水量非常大，并且复杂的有机矿物混合物中存在痕量污染物，因此寻找高效、可行且环保的三级水处理工艺具有挑战性。