Sistemas Integrados de Gestión: Procedimientos Interactivos

Los sistemas integrados de gestión (SIG), es decir, la gestión de la calidad, medioambiente, seguridad y salud, y más recientemente la I+D+i y la responsabilidad social corporativa también, son actualmente una herramienta empresarial necesaria para establecer un marco de sostenibilidad, mejora e innovación, y aprendizaje continuos que además contribuyan a la mejora final del posicionamiento de la empresa en el mercado. La implantación a nivel global de estas herramientas en la empresa implica la necesidad de formar profesionales preparados en estas áreas de conocimiento, integrando la docencia de estas materias en los grados actuales. La docencia de estas disciplinas se enfrenta a dificultades como el marco cambiante en el que se desarrollan, tanto a nivel empresarial como político o normativo, el tradicional desarrollo de material didáctico enfocado a organismos certificadores, pero no a alumnos universitarios, o la falta de integración de los materiales formativos existentes entre los diferentes docentes que las imparten. Se hace por tanto necesario el desarrollo de foros de discusión en docencia universitaria de estas materias y de materiales didácticos, innovadores, actualizados y enfocados a alumnos universitarios. El desarrollo de este proyecto de innovación docente está permitiendo el desarrollo de dichos foros de discusión intra- e inter-universitarios y el desarrollo de un material docente innovador y enfocado al ámbito universitario.Departamento de Ingeniería Agrícola y Foresta

Evaluation of MF and UF as pretreatments prior to RO applied to reclaim waste water for fresh water substituion in a paper mill: A practical experience

A pilot plant study has been carried out to compare the effectiveness of different low pressure membrane systems (microfiltration and ultrafiltration) as pretreatments for a reverse osmosis system producing high quality reclaimed water from the effluent of a municipal wastewater treatment plant receiving a high percentage of industrial wastewater. The reclaimed water will be used to substitute fresh water in a paper mill. Although the implemented systems showed several problems derived from the unstable quality of the feed water, they were solid enough to keep a constant permeate quality; i.e. percentages of salt rejection above 99%, efficiencies in the removal of microorganisms to lower values than 1 CFU/100 mL, and final COD results below the detection limit (<5 mg L−1). In short, the quality of the produced reclaimed water was good enough to be used substituting fresh water in a paper mill. An enhanced monitoring of the quality of the water feeding the municipal wastewater treatment plant and an improved corresponding management of the treatments performed in there may be one of the keys to the success of this type of reclamation initiatives. Achieving constant disinfection, an appropriate design of the plants, and a good performance of cleaning operations were very important factors to be considered in order to fight against fouling. Temperature and the soaking time of chemical membrane cleanings were particularly well-optimized for the success of the treatment. Chloramines were compared to free chlorine as disinfection agent achieving satisfactory results

Influence of Water Quality on the Efficiency of Retention Aids Systems for the Paper Industry

It has been reported that about 10-15% of the fresh water intake in a paper mill is used for feeding and diluting retention aids, so significant savings could be achieved by replacing fresh water with process water. Water from different sources and qualitiessfresh water, the outflow from an internal ultrafiltration placed in the machine circuit of a paper mill, and water from a membrane bioreactor used to treat the final effluent of this paper millswere used to prepare a dual retention system consisting of a cationic polyacrylamide and bentonite. While the behavior of bentonite was not significantly affected by the quality of the water used in its preparation, the efficiency of the cationic polyacrylamide was reduced to about 12% when it was prepared with water with high anionic trash content and conductivity as a result of a partial neutralization of the charged groups. The effect of nonionic chemical oxygen demand on the efficiency of the polymer was negligible

The application of advanced oxidation technologies to the treatment of effluents from the pulp and paper industry: a review

Producción CientíficaPaper industry is adopting zero liquid effluent technologies to reduce fresh water use and meet environmental regulations, which implies water circuits closure and the progressive accumulation of pollutants that must be removed before water re-use and final wastewater discharge. The traditional water treatment technologies that are used in paper mills (such as dissolve air flotation or biological treatment) are not able to remove recalcitrant contaminants. Therefore, advanced water treatment technologies, such as advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), are being included in industrial wastewater treatment chains aiming to either improve water biodegradability or its final quality. A comprehensive review of the current state of the art regarding the use of AOPs for the treatment of the organic load of effluents from the paper industry is herein addressed considering mature and emerging treatments for a sustainable water use in this sector. Wastewater composition, which is highly dependent of the raw materials being used in the mills, the selected AOP itself, and its combination with other technologies, will determine the viability of the treatment. In general, all AOPs have been reported to achieve good organics removal efficiencies (COD removal >40%; and about an extra 20% if AOPs are combined with biological stages). Particularly, ozonation has been the most extensively reported and successfully implemented AOP at an industrial scale for effluent treatment or reuse within pulp and paper mills; although Fenton processes (photo-Fenton particularly) have actually addressed better oxidative results (COD removal ≈65-75%) at lab scale, but still need further development at large scale.Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid - (Proyecto P-2009/AMB/1480)Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación - (Proyecto CIT-310000-2008-15

Treatment of a mature landfill leachate: Comparison between homogeneous and heterogeneous photo-fenton with different pretreatments

Producción CientíficaThis study focuses on the treatment of a mature landfill leachate by coagulation and photo-Fenton at different conditions. Optimal coagulation is carried out with ferric chloride in acid conditions; and with alum in near-neutral conditions, to minimize the use of sulphuric acid for pH adjustment (1 g/L vs. 7.2 g/L), the generation of sludge and the increase of conductivity in the final effluent. In both cases, a similar chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal is obtained, higher than 65%, which is high enough for a subsequent photo-Fenton treatment. However, the removal of absorbance at 254 nm (UV-254) was significantly higher with ferric chloride (83% vs. 55%), due to the important removal of humic acids at acid pH. The best results for coagulation are 2 g/L ferric chloride at initial pH = 5 and 5 g/L alum at initial pH = 7. After coagulation with ferric chloride, the final pH (2.8) is adequate for a homogeneous photo-Fenton using the remaining dissolved iron (250 mg/L). At these conditions, using a ratio H2O2/COD = 2.125 and 30 min contact time, the biodegradability increased from 0.03 to 0.51. On the other hand, the neutral pH after alum coagulation (6.7) allows the use of zero valent iron (ZVI) heterogeneous photo-Fenton. In this case, a final biodegradability of 0.32 was obtained, after 150 min, using the same H2O2/COD ratio. Both treatments achieved similar results, with a final COD, UV-254 and color removal greater than 90%. However, the economic assessment shows that the approach of ferric chloride + homogeneous photo-Fenton is much cheaper (6.4 €/m3 vs. 28.4 €/m3). Although the discharge limits are not achieved with the proposed combination of treatments, the significant increase of the pre-treated leachate biodegradability allows achieving the discharge limits after a conventional biological treatment such as sequencing batch reactor, which would slightly increase the total treatment cost.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (project CTM2016-77948-R

Comparison of ultrafiltration and dissolved air flotation efficiencies in industrial units during the papermaking process

The efficiency of an ultrafiltration unit has been studied and compared with a dissolved air flotation system to get water with a suited quality to be reused in the process. The study was done at a paper mill producing light weight coated paper and newsprint paper from 100% recovered paper. Efficiency was analysed by removal of turbidity, cationic demand, total and dissolved chemical oxygen demand, hardness, sulphates and microstickies. Moreover, the performance of the ultrafiltration unit and the membranes were studied deeply, analysing its variability during the filtration process. As expected, the ultrafiltration gave higher removal efficiencies than the dissolved air flotation cell in parameters like turbidity, cationic demand, dissolved chemical oxygen demand and microstickies. The greatest difference in performance between the units concerned cationic demand and dissolved chemical oxygen demand. Ultrafiltration was influenced by the operating time, decreasing the removal efficiency of the dissolved fraction by 75% and of the colloidal fraction by 30% after 312 of running. Membrane autopsy, carried out to identify the cause of poor membrane performance, showed that the active layer was degraded due to the effect of suspended solids

The possibility of removal of endocrine disrupters from paper mill waste waters using anaerobic and aerobic biological treatment, membrane bioreactor, ultra-filtration, reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation processes

Producción CientíficaAn endocrine disrupter is an exogenous agent that interferes with the synthesis, binding, secretion, transport, action or elimination of natural hormones in the body that are responsible for the maintenance of homeostasis, reproduction, development, and behaviour. Some of them are suspected of causing abnormalities in sperm and increasing hormone-related cancers in humans. Studies have also been published on the estrogen-like responses of endocrine disrupters in wildlife, such as birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish. Endocrine disrupters include a wide variety of pollutants such as alkylphenols, bisphenol A, pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), phthalates, heavy metals, and natural or synthetic hormones. They may be released into the environment in different ways. One of the most important sources of endocrine disrupters are industrial waste waters. The conventional waste water treatment processes are not specifically designed to remove traces of dangerous organic contaminants (except for heavy metals) so the latter are consequently consumed by aquatic organisms and through them may also enter human food chain. In the presented research the following treatments for removing of organic endocrine disrupting compounds from paper mill waste waters were compared: anaerobic biological treatment, membrane bioreactor, and reverse osmosis (pilot plant A), and combined (anaerobic and aerobic) biological treatment, ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis (pilot plant B) at pilot scale and advanced oxidation processes (Fenton, photo-Fenton, photo-catalysis with TiO2 and ozonation) at laboratory scale. The results indicated that the concentrations of organic endocrine compounds from paper mill waste waters were efficiently reduced (100%) by both combinations of pilot plants, photo-Fenton oxidation (95%) while the ozonation, photo-catalysis with TiO2 reagent and Fenton reaction was less effective (70–80%).Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid - (Proyecto S-0505/AMB-0100)Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación - (Proyecto CTM2008-06886-C02- 01)Unión Europea - (Project 211534

pH and particle structure effects on silica removal by coagulation

Producción CientíficaCoagulation is presented as an efficient alternative to reduce the silica content in effluents from recovered-paper mills that are intended to be recycled by a final reverse-osmosis (RO) step. Coagulation pretreatment by several polyaluminum chlorides (PACls) or FeCl3 was optimized prior to the RO process. PACls with low alumina content and high basicity achieved almost a 100 % removal of silica at pH 10.5. A good reduction of the silica content was attained without regulating the pH by adding one of these PACls. Silica removal was related to the structure of the produced clots in which cylindrical particles produced higher silica removal. All coagulants removed more than 50 % of the chemical oxygen demand (COD).Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid - (Proyecto P2009/AMB-1480)Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación - (Proyecto CTM2008-06886-C02- 01)Comisión Europea - (Proyecto 211534

Simultaneous production of biogas and volatile fatty acids through anaerobic digestion using cereal straw as substrate

Producción CientíficaCereal straw is one of the most abundant wastes worldwide, with 30.000 million tons produced per year. Bioconversion of this residual material into carboxylates by anaerobic digestion could potentially replace conventional production based on fossil feedstocks (oil). In this work, fundamental issues of this bioconversion have been explored, including: different kinds of straw (wheat, barley and rye), biomass size reduction, mass balances and modelling of the different steps of the digestion. Under optimum conditions, 44% of the raw material was effectively converted into VFAs (mainly acetate) when barley was used as substrate. Wheat and rye straw presented lower conversion rates due to the higher lignin content compared to barley straw. According to the modelling proposed, methanogenesis and hydrolysis presented very similar reaction rates, which resulted in a simultaneous production of VFAs and biogas. In view of these results, a process integration is proposed where biogas covers the thermal needs of the biotransformation of barley biomass into VFAs.Junta de Castilla León - EU-FEDER (CLU 2017-09 y CL-EI-2021-07)Ministerio de Ciencia e innovación - Agencia Estatal de Investigación (PID2020-114918RB-I00)LIFE program through LIFE SMART AgroMobility (LIFE19 CCM/ES/001206

Combining coagulation and electrocoagulation with UVA-LED photo-fenton to improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of mature landfill leachate treatment

Producción CientíficaThis study focused on the reduction of the treatment cost of mature landfill leachate (LL) by enhancing the coagulation pre-treatment before a UVA-LED photo-Fenton process. A more efficient advanced coagulation pretreatment was designed by combining conventional coagulation (CC) and electro-coagulation (EC). Regardless of the order in which the two coagulations were applied, the combination achieved more than 73% color removal, 80% COD removal, and 27% SUVA removal. However, the coagulation order had a great influence on both final pH and total dissolved iron, which were key parameters for the UVA-LED photo-Fenton post-treatment. CC (pH = 5; 2 g L−1 of FeCl36H2O) followed by EC (pH = 5; 10 mA cm−2) resulted in a pH of 6.4 and 100 mg L−1 of dissolved iron, whereas EC (pH = 4; 10 mA cm−2) followed by CC (pH = 6; 1 g L−1 FeCl36H2O) led to a final pH of 3.4 and 210 mg L−1 dissolved iron. This last combination was therefore considered better for the posterior photo-Fenton treatment. Results at the best cost-efficient [H2O2]:COD ratio of 1.063 showed a high treatment efficiency, namely the removal of 99% of the color, 89% of the COD, and 60% of the SUVA. Conductivity was reduced by 17%, and biodegradability increased to BOD5:COD = 0.40. With this proposed treatment, a final COD of only 453 mg O2 L−1 was obtained at a treatment cost of EUR 3.42 kg COD−1.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (CTM2016-77948-R)Comunidad de Madrid - Project RETOPROSOST-2 (S2018/EMT-4459