Objective
The leather finishing industry uses a large amount of water (about 17M3/Tm of leather) and thus produces great quantities of waste water. These effluents are normally treated conventionally by use of flocculation/coagulation, which manage to reduce the COD, solids in suspension and colour, but in many cases still do not come up to prevailing standards. Aware of the scarcity of water in certain regions of the south of Europe, the possibility arose to produce a treatment of these effluents that would surpass legal requirements and aiming to save water recycling more than 90% of the water in the same process of leather finishing. This solution will be applicable, with some modifications, to other industrial sectors such as tanning and textiles. The project comprises the treatment of effluents in the leather finishing industry using membrane technology (reverse osmosis), obtaining a water of similar or superior quality to the drinkable water used in the original process (in Chapter 2 the characteristicsof the original water and of the effluent are shown). The concentrate that is obtained from the process will undergo a treatment afterwards either by incineration, by electrochemical oxidation or by using a thermal treatment where a minimal waste (less than 1.5 kg per m3 of treated concentrate is produced) and can be treated as Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), then dumped. The technological objective consists of developing the proposed process and obtaining its patent, in such a way that it can later be commercialized. The economic target is that the cost per cubic metre of treated effluent be less than the cost of the water plus the wastage tax/sewerage (treatment cost <200 ptas/m3).
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwater treatment processeswastewater treatment processes
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcolors
- engineering and technologychemical engineeringseparation technologiesdesalinationreverse osmosis
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringtextiles
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processes
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CRS - Cooperative research contractsCoordinator
03600 Elda
Spain