The activities of this operating objective are focused on the sludges that arise from the tannery wastewater treatment processes in the leather district. In view of the varying quality of treated wastewater (due to the different tanning processes carried out in the interested areas), these wastes have different characteristics, considering that:
- In the case of the plant Aquarno, its sludge coming from the "secondary sedimentation", ie downstream of the biological treatment process with activated sludge;
- In the case of the plant Cuoiodepur its sludge come from primary sedimentation ie upstream of the biological treatment process with activated sludge.
On the characteristics of these flows, there is a documented historical knowledge, which requires a rationalization for the purposes of this project. This is of great interest also in relation to the expected quantitative and qualitative evolution that these flows will suffer, albeit in different ways, as a result of changes in management of the cycle of water treatment already planned in the district.
From this starting point is the need to have a detailed picture of not only the variance of the characteristics of the sludge, but also to make predictions about the future characteristics.
From the study of the behavior and responses that the sludge, the object of experimentation, will following the adoption of the various techniques of pre-treatment and treatment that will be tested in this project must be able to fully understand what it is, even in future projection , the "representativeness" of the obtained data..
And 'well-known fact that the above-mentioned characteristics of the sludge (for both qualitative, quantitative) are subject to variation on the same plant, both in dependence of production processes (tanneries), which are seasonal, which in according to the process parameters.
It is well known, in fact, that the above-mentioned characteristics of the sludge(for both qualitative and quantitative ) are subject to variation even on the same plant, both in dependence of production processes (tanneries), which are seasonal, which in according to the process parameters.
The knowledge and quantification of these phenomena need to be rationalized, also making use of elaboration systems / interpretation of data such as ones offered by the use of chemometric techniques in order to avoid wasting experimental resources in less productive directions.
Similar cognitive demands requires the field, the larger and more indeterminate, of the other typical waste streams of the tanning district, which may be interesting for the integration in the recovery cycles (energy or matter) that involve sludge or in other hypothetic autonomous cycles which need to be developed separately. The activities of this operational objective are aimed at obtaining:
- An analysis of the "historical data" on qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the sludge produced by the WWTP of the leather district;
- An analysis of the available information on the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of other types of organic wastes produced in the leather district;
- The implementation of characterization systems of the waste streams of interest, where those ordinary used in practice prove to be incomplete for the purposes of the project;
- The development of measurement systems for these elements during the course of the project with the choice of qualifying parameters for the necessary information (monitoring protocols);
- The development of a predictive model of the variation of these characteristics in response to changes in technical and management procedures that are already provided inside the district;
- The possibility of defining, for each "batch" of material experimentally used, its representativeness both from the point of view "historic", that "future";
- The ability to simulate, with appropriate changes to the characteristics of the available sludge, those which will be the likely characteristics of the sludge that will be produced as a result of planned technical and management development processes and systems in the district.