Such is the name of the project: ACQUA360. It is a new system to purify and refine municipal sewage, which will be subsequently recycled in tanneries for the leather processing. The project, started up in the Tuscan Leather District in 2016 last quarter, will go on throughout 2018, thus bringing forward and testing one of the accomplishments achieved through the so-called “Tubone”, a water rearrangement system in which 42 Tuscany’s municipalities are engaged. The core of the system will be Aquarno, a purifying plant located in Santa Croce upon Arno (it is due to work at full speed within the next 4 years). The partners who joined the ACQUA 360 project are, along with Aquarno, Po.Te.Co. (Polo Tecnologico Conciario – Tanning Technological Hub), Archa Laboratories, DeltAcque and San Lorenzo, Settebello and Victoria tanneries. Points out Nicola Andreanini (in the picture), general manager of Aquarno: “We shall most rely on feedback coming from manufacturing companies, as much as from Po.Te.Co.: in fact, that will be about the commercial quality of the finished product. Recovered water will have to replace, without affecting the corporate manufacturing, waters currently taken from the subsoil”. The project, financially supported through POR FESR Tuscany 2014-2020, drove the implementation of an experimental plant to purify and refine municipal sewage. The aim is to produce a suitable amount of process water to supply the three tanneries engaged in the project. For the time being, the new sewage system has been put in operation only in the companies who are participating in the project; all tanneries, possibly interested in it, may test ACQUA360 though.
