ReVOC4LIFE, the research project founded by EU which aim to reduce the environmental impact within Life Programme, was on stage at the exhibition Lineapelle 100 edition with the dissemination material inside the stand of BCN Concerie, one of the project partners, and with the talk “REVOC4LIFE, we clean the air with waste”.
Lineapelle is an exhibition dedicated to the whole leather world: leather, accessories, machineries.
It is the most important meeting point in the tanning industry, dedicated especially to customers in the furniture and automotive, footwear, leather goods and clothing sectors. Lineapelle takes place in Milano Fiera Rho, traditionally in parallel with the Milano Fashion Week, and welcomes visitors from all over the world: this year more than 13,000,000 visitors were registered, out of 1,134 exhibitors.
Visitors, material researchers and representatives of the style offices of luxury and high fashion brands, got to know the ReVOC4LIFE project. They were attracted by the presence of the Life program flag and the project logo on the canvas bag, delivered as a gadget at the BCN stand.
In addition, many IUAV students became aware of the project, thanks to the corner dedicated to the work of undergraduates sponsored by BCN Concerie; they asked to bring information material to their headquarters for further dissemination.
Among the visitors at the stand managers of companies of chemicals and machinery for tanning were hosted, and interesting discussion on the project took place…
During the second day of the exhibition, a delegation from the project team presented a panel discussion about the project in a deciated space of the event: title of the speech was “Revoc4life, we clean the air with waste”.
Dott.ssa Fabiana Orlandi was the moderator of the panel, which is available also on UNIC’s youtube channel.
The words of Dr. Giacomo Pacchi: “the project was born in the perspective of a continuous improvement of the environmental performance of our company […] to date, the only aspect directly impacting on the environment consists in VOCs emissions into the atmosphere. VOCs come from solvents used in the production of finished leather.
So we started from a study of the existing technology and we looked at what could be the most critical parameters and where could be the areas of most significant intervention…”
He continues, saying that “we have borrowed from other sectors a technology for water treatment that is continuously recirculated in the absorption system and we based our develpment on preliminary studies carried out in the past by our partner Aquarno”. In addition, “we have identified a waste, that is a dried sludge produced by the wastewater treatment, a material to be used as a sorbent for the removal of VOCs.”
Prof. Maurizia Seggiani continued by saying: “the idea is to use, downstream of the water stage, a, air treatment system where, as an alternative to commercial activated carbons, a waste, the KEU, is used as a sorbent. Therefore a whole series of tests have been made in different operating conditions, varying the classical operating conditions”.
The speech ended with Eng. Matteo Baggiani: “it’s important to say that we aren’t just talking about a Research & Development project.” It confirms that “obviously the project derives from other pure research projects carried out in the last five years by the University of Pisa with the collaboration of BCN and Aquarno with the aim of finding a use to this waste”, but it is worth underlining that “The plant exists: it’s built on scale 1:1, in addition, it’s already derived from a prototype on a small scale that is currently working and whose water part is substantially identical to the one that we will implement”
“The greatest thing about this project is that it completes a long investment path.”
The REVOC4LIFE research project will provide added value to the entire supply chain, by participating in the preservation of the salubrity of the air around the tanning industries and, in the future, will also be able to adapt to other types of industries.
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