Treatment of waste water in leather industry

A very important issue in the leather industry is the use of a variety of chemicals that are harmful if released into the environment especially the effluents that are released in the rivers. In the leather manufacture and processing industry, a waste amount of water is used where the quantity depends on the type and technological treatment employed. Therefore, the effluents from the different treatments vary in the type and content of various chemicals. In order to prevent the environmental pollution of the rivers-recipients of these effluents, it is necessary to develop and employ appropriate waste water treatment procedures for their purification prior to release in the environment. In this article, several concepts are suggested that may be employed for waste water treatment in the leather industry. These concepts use both classical and modern methodologies for waste water treatment by handling the overall combined effluent after homogenization and precipitation or by using separate treatments of effluents from different leather production phases. Special attention in this study has been paid to the treatments for elimination of chromium and sulphides from the waste waters from leather industry. (author)