Introduction to Treatment of Tannery Effluents

In view of ever increasing legal and social pressures, no tanner can afford the luxury of not being familiar with main issues and principles of environmental protection pertaining to tannery operations.

Obviously, pollution prevention, persistent promotion of cleaner leather processing, ultimately leading to lower treatment costs, remains the supreme priority.

Application of industrially proven low-waste advanced methods such as use of salt-free preserved raw hides and skins, hair-save liming, low- or ammonia-free deliming and bating, advanced chrome management system etc. it is possible to decrease the pollution load expressed as COD and BOD5 for more than 30 %, sulphides about 80 - 90 %, ammonia nitrogen 80 %, total (Kjeldahl) nitrogen 50 %, chlorides 70 %, sulphates 65 % and chromium up to 90 %.

Yet, despite all preventive measures, there is still a considerable amount of pollution load to be dealt with by the end-of-pipe methods.

The purpose of this booklet is to help a tanner or a tannery manager, possibly a well-trained leather technologist, to familiarise with basic principles and methods of treatment of tannery effluents. This knowledge should make him better equipped for a dialogue with the factory's own environmental unit, environmental authorities and NGOs.

With the view of keeping it short and concise there are many simplifications and omissions of details; thus, for in-depth understanding of the complexities of treatment of effluents and solid wastes (sludge) it is recommended to consult extensive literature on this subject.

Finally, although, contrary to widespread misperception that vegetable tanning is environmentally harmless (in reality its effluent have very high, difficult to treat COD), here it is dealt with combined chrome tanning only because it is by far the most prevailing leather tanning method

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