Alleviation of environmental impact of wastewater from leather tanning industry Bayan Bsharata , Amer El Hamouzb , Abdelrahim Abu Safab a : An-Najah national University Faculty of Graduate Studies b : An-Najah national University, chemical engineering department The tannery industry is responsible for leather production. Its wastewater is characterized as one of the highest toxicity intensities per unit of effluent, including high concentrations of organic compounds, dissolved solids, nitrogen and also heavy metals like chrome. In the West Bank, there are 13 Tanneries discharge highly polluted wastewater including heavy metals into sewer system or to environment without treatment. Until now wastewater treatment plants in Palestine cannot receive wastewater from any industrial plants including leather plants due to the high amount of chemicals in wastewater that cannot be easily treated. Hence there is a need to find a solution to treat tanneries wastewater and reduce/eliminate their toxic contaminant before discharging it to sewer system or environment. Hebron's tanneries have a chrome-recovery plant; however, this plant is currently not in operation due to the prohibition from Israeli for importing sulfuric acid, therefore, the only available method to treat chrome effluents is precipitate the chrome then send the sludge to the Israeli hazardous waste treatment landfill in Beer-AlSabe for final disposal at very high cost that is not affordable by the tanneries’ owners. For Nablus tannery, all effluents from all production process are mixed with ferric chloride in open pool. The resulted sludge is then sent to the sludge is sent to Zahrat Al-fingan landfill and supernatant, chrome free is disposed to the environment. This project is of two folds: first is the appropriate application of clean technology procedures to decrease or remove the high concentration of pollutants from each tanning step. Special attention will be given to chrome. treating effluent from each step or mixed effluents also proposed. The other part of this project is studying to study the probability of hexavalent chrome evolution through chromium sludge landfill life. Based on the lab experimental results it is expected to propose appropriate tanneries effluent treatment strategy that can be applied to reduce the pollution loads and make the wastewater safer as it is discharged to the environment. Finally, decide if Cr(III) is converted to Cr(VI) in soil or not.

Conference Title

PADUCO: Palestinian-Dutch Academic Cooperation on Water Internal Symposium, 25-26 March 2019, Birzeit University, Palestine

Conference Country

Palestine

Conference Date

March 25, 2019 - March 26, 2019

Conference Sponsor

PADUCOII