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Article history: Tanneries wastewaters are characterized by high organic matter and salt concentrations. Beamhouse
Received 20 January 2009 operations, in particular unhairing, are the processes that provide the most concentrated efuents con-
Received in revised form 14 October 2009 cerning the organic matter. Besides, the unhairing wastewater includes a high sulphides concentration.
Accepted 16 October 2009
Thus, the separated management of the unhairing efuents has been considered in the last 20 years with
the aim of their recycling and reuse. Ultraltration was a promising technique to separate the organic
Keywords:
matter from the chemicals (lime and sulphides) that could be reused in the unhairing process. However,
Tannery
the membrane fouling has avoided its application at an industrial scale. The main aims of this paper
Unhairing wastewater
Ultraltration
are to study the inuence of the reuse of the ultraltration permeate on the quality of the nal leather
Membrane cleaning and the comparison among different types of membrane cleaning. Ultraltration experiments, including
cleaning procedures, were carried out in a module for plane membranes with 30 cm2 of active surface.
Sodium dodecyl sulphate, two different enzymes and sodium hypochlorite were used as cleaning chem-
icals. In addition, the module conguration with only a plane membrane let the study of the effect of
providing air from the permeate side. Laboratory drums with a 5 L maximum capacity were used for the
permeate reuse and further hide samples processing in order to study the nal quality of the leathers.
Results showed that the nal quality of the leather was not modied by using ultraltration permeate
for the unhairing process. Concerning the membrane cleaning, the best results in terms of ux recovery
were achieved with 1000 mg L1 of sodium hypochlorite (92% of ux recovery) and with the air dosing
from the permeate side. Flux recovery with enzymatic cleaning hardly reached an efciency of 35%.
2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1383-5866/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.seppur.2009.10.010
J.A. Mendoza-Roca et al. / Separation and Purication Technology 70 (2010) 296301 297
in the literature [6,7]. However, cleaning procedures were barely Concerning the cleaning of the ultraltration membranes, it has
explained. to be highlighted that the cleaning efciency depends on clean-
Silva et al. (2001) carried out a pilot plant study with UF ing cycle, type of cleaner, concentration, hydrodynamics, pressure
membranes from Polyvinylidene Diuoride (PVDF) in a tannery and temperature [22]. A comparative study of different cleaning
processing sheep skins. Costs were also estimated [8]. These agents for UF membranes fouled by surface waters was carried out
authors stated that the economical feasibility were based on per- by Zondervan and Roffel [23], classifying the cleaning agents into
meate uxes higher than 40 L m2 h1 and process volumes higher six categories (acidic, caustic, sequestering/complexing, enzymatic,
than 10 m3 d1 . Brites and Silva (2006) also studied the UF of the oxidizing, disinfecting and blend). For these authors, the more pos-
unhairing wastewater, pointing out the importance of evaluating itive effects in the cleaning of membranes fouled with proteins are
the inuence of the permeate reuse on the nal leather quality [9]. produced by enzymes and oxidizers like sodium hypochlorite.
These authors did not report about the membrane cleaning. This work aims to advance in the purication and reuse of the
Tnay et al. (2001), reported that tanning industry had an unhairing wastewater with UF. For that, the inuence of the unhair-
immense potential for materials recovery but was the least studied ing with the UF permeate on the nal leather quality is discussed
branch in this aspect. Tanneries use to be small factories and inver- and different membrane cleaning procedures at laboratory scale
sions are often not possible if they were not collected in industrial are compared.
parks [10]. The elimination of the beamhouse operations in some
tanneries together with the problem of the membrane cleaning did 2. Material and methods
not enhance the study of the purication and reuse of the tannery
wastewaters by means of UF. 2.1. Analytical methods
However, for large size tanneries the purication of unhairing
wastewater with UF membranes is very interesting. The key points Unhairing wastewater samples were taken from a tannery
to apply this process in an industrial scale are the study of the effect processing cattle hides. In order to characterize the unhairing
of the hide unhairing with UF permeate on the nal leather and wastewater (feed solution) and the membrane permeate, COD, total
the membrane cleaning, due to the tremendous membrane fouling solids (TS), concentration of reduction agents (calculated as S2 ),
caused by the proteins of the unhairing wastewater. pH and conductivity were measured.
The amino-acids content in the proteins of the unhairing COD (by the dichromate reux method) and TS were determined
wastewaters is characterized by the presence of small concen- according to the Standard Methods [24]. Chlorides interference was
trations of a wide spectrum of these compounds. Cuadros et al. eliminated by the addition of HgSO4 . Thus, COD was a measurement
[11] reported that arginine and asparagine were the main amino- comprising both the oxygen demand of the organic matter and the
acids of these wastewaters. In this way, the peptidic chains in oxygen demand of the S2 and SH . Due to the high COD values,
the wastewater come from soluble proteins as albumin, globu- samples of the feed solution were diluted in a 1:50 ratio. The value
lin and keratin. The isoelectric point of the proteins from the adopted was the mean value after analyzing three samples.
unhairing wastewater is around pH 3. Thereby, the proteins are The concentration of reduction agents (as mg L1 of S2 ) was
negatively charged in the unhairing wastewater, since its pH is determined by titration of the excess of iodine, added after titration
around 12. of the sample with HCl, with a solution of Na2 S2 O3 . pH values were
Other papers have also been published pointing out the neces- measured using a GLP 22 CRISON pH-meter, while conductivity was
sity of minimizing the pollution coming from the unhairing process. measured using a conductivity-meter model 524 from CRISON.
Other solutions such as replacement of the sulphur by other chemi- The particle size distribution of the pre-ltrated unhairing
cals [12,13] and direct reuse of the residual bath [14] are proposed. wastewater was analyzed in Mastersizer 2000 from Malvern Instru-
However, most of tanneries maintain the traditional process. As ments.
an example, the enzymatic processes can entails possible collagen
degradation phenomena [9] and they require further research as 2.2. Laboratory plant
well.
In the last years, UF of other types of efuents, which are sim- The experiments were performed in a laboratory plant (Fig. 1).
ilar to the unhairing liquors in terms of difculty to be treated The feed solution (unhairing wastewater pretreated with a 50-m
like textile wastewaters and landll leachates has been studied. mesh size lter) was maintained at 25 C by the thermostatic bath.
Both contain a complex mixture of organic and inorganic pollu-
tants in high concentrations [15]. For textile wastewaters, Van der
Bruggen et al. [16] studied both the nanoltration of exhausted
dyes bath and the use of UF for the removal of spin nish from
wastewater resulting from rinsing of textile bres. These two
applications are feasible if membrane fouling can be controlled.
These authors concluded that the main fouling mechanism was the
adsorption of the organic compound. The penetration of low molec-
ular compounds into the membrane could enhance this fouling
phenomenon considerably. Concerning landll leachates, reverse
osmosis and nanoltration are considered the best techniques for
treating landll leachates. UF is proposed as pre-treatment [17].
Other examples are the UF of the black liquor from the pulp
and paper industry [18] and the whey protein concentrate in dairy
industries [19].
On the other hand, it has to be commented that notable advances
in the knowledge about the fouling phenomena of the UF mem-
branes caused by proteins have been developed in the last years
with the enormous growth of the membrane bioreactor market
[20,21]. Fig. 1. Scheme of the laboratory plant.
298 J.A. Mendoza-Roca et al. / Separation and Purication Technology 70 (2010) 296301
Table 2
Experimental procedure to evaluate the different types of cleaning.
Stage Operating
time (min)
Table 3
Unhairing wastewater characterization.
It was pumped to the UF module, controlling the pressure by means mined by measuring the volume of collected permeates during a
of the valve at the retentate side. determinate time interval. The notation used was as follows:
The UF module was the MINITAN-S of MILLIPORE for a mem-
brane sheet with an active surface of 30 cm2 . The used membranes Jwi : initial water permeate ux
were IRIS 3065 (Molecular weight cut-off = 40,000 Da) from ORELIS. Jww : permeate ux at the end of the UF step
Jr1 : permeate ux after the rst rinse
2.3. Experimental procedure for the permeate reuse Jc : permeate ux after washing with cleaning agent
Jfr : permeate ux after the nal rinse
Hide samples were unhaired with the UF permeate solution and
further processed in laboratory drums (Fig. 2) of 5 L of maximum
The cleaning agents were:
capacity.
Table 1 shows the physical quality parameters measured for the
Sodium dodecyl sulphate (DDS) (PANREAC).
nal leathers. These parameters were measured with the aim of
Enzymes: DEFAT 50 (CROMOGENIA UNITS, S.A.) and RIBERZIM
nding out if using the UF permeate as unhairing bath affected the
MPX (CROMOGENIA UNITS, S.A.), used in the tannery in the beam-
leather characteristics.
house operations.
Sodium hypochlorite (PANREAC).
2.4. Experimental procedure for the membrane cleaning study
Cleaning procedures were tested after UF experiments. In UF Experiments with DDS and sodium hypochlorite were carried
experiments, the reject stream was driven to the feed tank again out at different concentrations, replicating the tests.
whereas the permeate stream was stored in a separated tank for its Concerning the cleaning with NaOCl, the maximum con-
reuse in the laboratory drums. The volume concentration factor at centration recommended by the membrane manufacturer was
the end of each test was of 2. The procedure used (except for the 1500 mg L1 for a weekly use of this chemical cleaning. In the exper-
cleaning procedure with air back ushing) is illustrated in Table 2. iments the maximum concentration of sodium hypochlorite was
UF pressure was chosen from previous experimental works, while 1000 mg L1 in order to prevent the membrane from any damage.
the cross-ow velocity was maintained low in order to enhance the All experiments were carried out with the same membrane.
fouling of the membrane. The values of the operating time, pressure
and cross-ow velocity set up during the different stages of the 3. Results and discussion
cleaning procedure were set up after the literature data revision
[2932]. 3.1. Wastewater and permeate characterization
In the case of the physical cleaning (with compressed air), 10 s
of gas with a pressure of 1.5 bar was supplied. The last stage in this Tables 3 and 4 show the results of the analysis of wastewa-
cleaning procedure was a water rinse [33]. ter and permeate samples. Due to the high concentration values,
After each cleaning step, the permeate ux at 2 bar pressure samples dilution had to be carried out for the most of the analysis
was measured using distilled water as feed. Flow rates were deter- generating an error source. Thus, results are expressed as ranges
Table 1 Table 4
Leather quality parameters and their standard procedures. UF permeate characterization.
Table 5
Physical characteristics of the nished leather after unhairing with fresh liquor and with UF permeate.
Physical test Fibre Minimal value Normal unhairing process Unhairing with
direction required (fresh liquor) UF permeate
Table 7
Results of the enzymatic cleaning experiments (ux values in L m2 h1 ).
decline after the rst test of each membrane. Better results were
obtained by increasing the DDS concentration. Thus, the higher DDS
concentration, the higher ux recovery. However, the maximum
DDS concentration was limited as it was explained above.
However, the fouling of the membranes is very severe. Thus, it [13] J.M. Morera, A. Bacardit, L. Oll, E. Bartol, M.D. Borrs, Minimization of the
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