Abstract
The most important process in the making of leather is converting raw hides/skins into leather by chrome tanning using basic chromium sulfate or vegetable tanning using vegetable extracts like wattle, chestnut, myrobalan and valonea. Vegetable tanning extracts predominantly contain tannins which bind to the collagen. Vegetable tanning process is usually carried out in tanneries for the production of sole and heavy leathers. In this study, the vegetable tanning wastewater (VTW) was collected from the vegetable tanning bath and was characterized for all physicochemical parameters. The biodegradability assessment was performed using laboratory-scale batch aerobic reactors of 2 L capacity. The results indicated that the VTW had a BOD5/COD ratio of 0.154 implying that it was not easily biodegradable and 80% of COD was found due to the presence of tannins. The biodegradability test showed an apparent removal of only 24 and 34% of COD, and tannins were observed over a residence time of 24 h. This shows that the efficiency of aerobic microorganisms is affected by the binding of tannins to their cell wall. Supporting data obtained with the help of FTIR is presented in this paper.
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