This document summarizes a meeting about sustainable leather production technologies and the role of Acque del Chiampo wastewater treatment plant in evaluating the environmental impacts. Acque del Chiampo conducted monitoring of 20 tanneries and a census of production processes. They will use life cycle assessment to evaluate impacts of new technologies on wastewater quality and treatment if adopted by all tanneries. The assessment will quantify impacts on greenhouse gas, acidification, ozone depletion, smog, and eutrophication from wastewater treatment.

1. 15 Dicembre 2015
Istituto Conciario G.Galilei Arzignano
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Daniele Refosco, Acque del Chiampo: Concerie a ciclo completo: l’analisi LCA da qui al futuro.

2. Tanneries with the full cycle
process : LCA analysis from
here to the future
Ing. Refosco D.

3. Adc role in the project
Technical-analytical consulting and processing of analytical data in
order to assess:
• the potential impact on the functionality of the wastewater treatment
plant due to the new technologies proposals of all the partners;
• which may be the impacts of new study technologies if they was
adopted by other (or all) of the companies linked to the waste water
treatment plant.

4. Adc role in the project
The evaluations will be done on theoretical projections made by:
• collection of historical data;
• collection of more information on the production and processing cycles
at all tanneries linked to the wastewater treatment plant ;
• collection of data from experimentations with companies that have
carried out;
• extrapolations.

5. What we have done
• Identified 20 tanneries that have studied the same processes in the
Greenlife project;
• 27/06/2014 started the monitoring on tannery wastewater (at November
1152 sampling / analysis);
• Visit the tannery partners;
• Sampling and analysis at all the stages of processing;
• Cognitive census.

6. Cognitive Census
• Between November and December it has been prepared a cognitive
census about the liming process and tanning process in the district of
Arzignano for the year 2014.
• The census sent on 16/03/15 allowed to obtain sufficient information to
be able to extrapolate the various data collected and further estimate a
possible impact on the environment until the adoption by the tanneries
investigate new technologies under development

7. Census
Surveyed tanneries:
The 20 surveyed tanneries (identified from 130) in function of the
processes can be divided as follows:
• 4 exclusively process liming and tanning;
• 8 predominantly process liming e tanning;
• 8 the full cicle process.

8. Census
Manufacturing 2014:
HIDE U.M. Results
Hide ton/year 178043
Hide (fresh) % 30,6
Hide (salted) % 69,4
Europe % 91
Extra-Europe % 9
Cattle % 88,22
Calves % 11,57
Horses % 0,2
Sheep/goats % 0,01

9. Census
Incidence:
Parameter U.M. load Incidence %
Volume m3
/year 3.820.640 46
TSS ton/year 14.453 70
COD filt ton/year 17.226 58
Clohrides ton/year 19.103 85
Sulfates ton/year 7.674 53
TKN filt ton/year 1.458 49
Chromium ton/year 388 61

10. Census
Liming process:
• The liming process has an exhaust volume of 24% in the tannery discharge
process and 11% total wastewater volume for the waster water treatment
plant;
• 4 tanneries are equipped with a recovery plant for the liming baths, in
which 3 (7.5% of the discharged volume) the liming process is recovery in
each bath;
• The average percentage of total sulphides total used, compared to the
average for those who do not use recovery, show a decrease of about
45%;
• Only four tanneries are equipped with a recovery plant recovery for the hair
and only two of these use it.

11. Census
Chromium tanning:
• The tanning process has an exhaust volume of 17% in the tannery
discharge process and 8% total wastewater volume for the waster water
treatment plant;
• The amount of leathers tanned with chromium is about 123,600 tons
(approximately 69% of the total);
• Have been used about 1294 tons of chromium, with a ratio of about 10 kg
of chromium per tonne of tanned leather;
• The tanneries equipped with a plant for the recovery of chromium are two,
but only one was active in 2014. Part of the chrome was recovered within
the tannery and part disposed of in landfills.

12. Census
Chrome free tanning:
• The chrome-free tanning process has an exhaust volume of 9,5% in the
tannery discharge process and 4,4% total wastewater volume for the
waster water treatment plant;
• There are 9 tanneries that do the chrome-free tanning and only one of
these do exclusively chrome-free tanning;
• The amount of chrome-free tanned for 2014 is about 40.800 tons (about
23% of the total);
• The mainly tanning agents used in the chrome-free tanning are
glutaraldehyde and oxazolidine;

13. LCA
LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is a methodology for assessing the
environmental impact of a product or service in its entire life cycle.
As the life cycle are defined consecutive and interconnected steps
for the production of a good or the supply of a service, including
the extraction and processing of raw materials used, the
manufacturing, transportation, distribution, use, reuse, recycling
and final disposal.

14. LCA Acque del Chiampo
The life cycle starts with the collection of wastewater from industry and
civil, then includes the steps of treatment at the wastewater treatment plant
and ends with the production and stabilization of output as sludge and
treated wastewater.
The study will provide a picture of the distribution of impacts at various
stages of life cycle analysis, taking into account the efficiency of sewage
treatment plant for the major physical and chemical parameters.
The LCA is a tool that facilitates the assessment of future changes in the
environmental impacts related to possible changes of the input elements
and / or process steps, so for example the impact of a change in tanning
processes object of the Life project.

15. LCA: Assessment of impacts
Will be quantified the impacts regarding the service of waste water purification
for the following categories of environmental impact:
•Greenhouse effect;
•acidification;
•Reduction of the ozone layer;
•Photochemical smog;
•eutrophication;

16. LCA: Assessment of indicators
Further will be investigate the following environmental indicators:
•hazardous and non-hazardous;
•greenhouse from biological resources;
•aquatic ecotoxicity;
•production of by-product;
•land use
•toxic emissions to air (hydrogen sulfide, VOCs, organic aerosols).

17. Thanks for your attention