An overview of leather processing industry.

Abstract

Leather processing is one of the oldest and largest industry leading to significant employment generation. It involves a series of unit operations, involving mostly various inorganic chemicals. Every step generates huge amount of wastewater, typically characterized by high total dissolved and suspended solids, high chemical and biological oxygen demand. This chapter outlines the processing steps involved in a leather industry and characteristics of the wastewater emerging from each operating step. The chapter would also provide the possible outlines of treatment technologies to be adopted for the treatment of tannery wastewater keeping in view the sustainability of the adopted technologies addressing the concepts of zero liquid discharge and circular economy.