Treatment and Recovery of Brine Waters Coming from AgroAlimentary Industries

The treatment of brine water currently represents one of the major problems in the disposal of waste produced by the agro-food industry. Brines mainly originate in food preparation and pre-treatment processes where the salt, whether in a solid state or diluted in water, is used as a preservative or as a dehydrating element. In Italy, the processing of curated ham represents one of the leading sectors of the agro-food industry. The thirty-one consortium companies located in the northern east Italy region, process around three million thighs of prosciutto a year. The salting phases and subsequent treatment in cold storage of ham legs, produce about 3500 tons / year of brine. The brine waters deriving from leachate obtained during the salting process have extremely high COD values (8,000 mg COD / l-12,000 mg COD / l) due to the presence of dissolved fat and blood, with salinity values salinity values averagely included between 60,000 mg NaCl2 / l and 150,000 mgNaCl2 / l, which make their treatment and recovery process extremely difficult. The results obtained during three years of the experimental study, allowed to highlight a high degree of purification of brine water together with the achievement of high sanitary hygienic characteristics of the recovered salt, which allow an enhancement of the product obtained with its placing on the market at extremely competitive prices.