ANAEROBIC TREATMENT OF TANNERY EFFLUENTS FOR RESOURCE RECOVERY IN A CIRCULAR BIOECONOMY

The datasets presented are for a number of inter-related studies that focussed on the optimisation of the anaerobic treatment of ostrich and bovine tannery wastewater for resource recovery to promote a circular bioeconomy and net positive tannery operations. The studies: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.135872; 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psep.2021.12.027; and 

https://doi.org/10.3390/en14092491 investigated the characteristics of different tannery effluent streams, their anaerobic mono/co-digestion, process kinetics, treatment in a biological integrated system (IBS) and suitability of the recovered resources for recycling and/or reuse.

The full-scale application of the IBS at a local medium-sized tannery treating 2258 m³/day of bovine tannery wastewater demonstrated the feasibility of producing a floating sulfur biofilm with 33% elementary sulfur (S⁰), 3420 m³ of CH₄, and 31 tonnes of biofertiliser. The sale of recovered resources and potential savings from 72% reduction in electricity demand and 62% in sludge disposal had a potential revenue of US$5559. The integrated system has a payback period of about 5 years and an internal rate of return of about 18%.