Giovanni Pio, Responsabile Tecnico Commerciale – Depur Padana Acque
Depur Padana Acque is an important business in the ‘industrial waste water purification’ sector, which has been active since 1972, activity which has been carried out by the technical/management staff aiming at the protection of the environment, since water is considered a primary resource, essential for human beings and for their survival. The company is located in the industrial area of Rovigo on a surface of about 20.000 square metres, including more than 6000 which are occupied by the manufacturing plant and 2000 which are dedicated to the offices and to the official testing laboratories.
The internal staff consists of more than one hundred workers (increasing more and more) together with the numerous external service centres located throughout the Italian regions, including the islands, to ensure a widespread and effective after-sales support service. This service can be provided on call or through scheduled visits. Over the years, the company has acquired a great experience by tackling and solving difficult and various problems related to the purification of industrial waste water in general, and specializing at the same time in certain sectors or market niches where a more widespread activity has been made possible.
One of these sectors, which could be defined historic as the company has worked in it for longer than 40 years, is exactly the paint industry one, represented by waterborne paints and coatings manufacturers receiving from Depur Padana Acque tested and consolidated plant solutions for the waste water depuration, coming from the washing operations of the manufacturing equipment: dispersing and mixing tanks, wheeled tanks, filling and packaging lines, etc. These waste waters, which are obviously contaminated with paint residues, require specific purification treatments thanks to which it is possible to separate the polluting substances from the water itself, and make the latter suitable for discharge into public sewers in compliance with the restrictions imposed by current anti-pollution regulations (with particular reference to Legislative Decree No. 152/06).
The range of plants and technological solutions developed by Depur Padana Acque for paint industries is really wide and diversified, meeting all the needs of different customers and which can range from small family-owned companies up to big multinational companies. With this purpose in mind, a standardized range of chemical-physical plants was developed, especially for this sector and whose working mechanism can be discontinuous/semi-automatic (in this case the ‘Ecosar’ range plants are referred to).
The semi-automatic ‘Ecover’ plants are manufactured as mono block systems and they are compact, in order not to take up too much space when they are installed in small factories. Furthermore, their operation is very simple and easy to understand. The range includes 4 models of different sizes, with capacities varying from 1000 to 4000 litres per treatment cycle. They also represent the optimal solution also from an economic point of view, given their very balanced cost, and are therefore particularly suitable for small paint factories, with small quantities of wastewater to be treated (which we can quantify at approximately 1000/2000 litres per week). In this case, the purification can take place in a single batch treatment cycle, which will allow the entire volume of wastewater produced to be managed throughout the working week.
On the contrary, in case of higher quantities (approximately starting from 500/1000 litres per day and more), the ideal plant is certainly the Ecosar Model, whose working mechanism is continuous and completely automated. It is a system that uses only two chemical reagents for purification, one liquid and one powder ones and whose dosing always takes place automatically and under strict pH control. The design of these systems is equally ‘monoblock’ type and therefore with rather small overall dimensions. It is also worth highlighting the construction quality, which is very high thanks to the use of quality materials (polypropylene and stainless steel) to guarantee excellent resistance and durability over time. The range consists of various models with treatment capacities ranging from 300 to 1600 litres/h. Also in this case the operation of the systems has been designed to be very simple also from a handling point of view, and such as not to require the presence of specialized workers to carry out ordinary control and maintenance activities.
In the treatment of the waste water produced by paint factories, sometimes the chemical-physical process alone is not enough to guarantee the complete purification and the removal of all polluting substances. In this case, the treatment cycle, in addition to the first chemical-physical stage, may also require a second step consisting of either a filtration line on inert material/activated carbon or a small biological section with activated sludge. In any case, in the preparatory stage of the project, the choice of the process as a whole is made by Depur Padana Acque technicians following accurate analytical studies on one or more samples of the wastewater to be treated which are carried out in its well-equipped internal laboratory.
In addition to the above said standardized plant solutions, it is also possible to work with specific and tailor-made designs for the customer, perhaps due to particular needs and/or limitations in terms of space available for the construction of the plant or volumes of wastewater to be treated which are particularly high or even in the case where more restrictive discharge limits must be guaranteed than those envisaged for the public sewer system (as in the case of discharge into surface waters or, even worse, onto the ground).
Along with the design and construction of the purification plants, the company also has a manufacturing section where chemical products for the treatment of water and sludge are formulated and packaged.
