Objective
Leather residues are produced within tannery, footwear and other leather goods manufacturers. In Europe more than 80% of the leather used is treated with trivalent chromium. Annually more than 500.000 ton of leather residues are produced and dumped without recovering its chromium content in UE member states. The controlled combustion of these leather scraps would produce around 25.000 ton./year of chromium oxide. Chromium is considered by the UE as a strategic metal for Europe. There are already solutions for the gas effluents generated, but no added value utilisation has been proposed for the ashes. The overall objectives of this project concern this ashes, and are to: 1. Contribute for the integral use of the chromium tanned leather residues, i.e. using their heat value and the contained materials, by developing useful applications for the produced ashes : as a raw material for chromium salts production; as a filler to include on footwear adhesives; as either a filler or a pigment or both to be added to cement and concrete; and to produce inert aggregates; 2. Contribute to decrease the overall volume of residues generated by the tanning and footwear industrial sectors and the costs associated to their correspondent management; and, on contrary, improve their competitiveness by integrating the energy and the final residues or their resulting products into the tanning and footwear production processes; 3. Create a sustainable development alternative, thus an economically and environmentally correct way to manage tanning and footwear leather residues; 4. Suppress the negative effects on the environment that result from the uncontrolled actual practices of indiscriminate dumping and buming leather residues.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CRS - Cooperative research contractsCoordinator
3880 Ovar
Portugal