Thermal valorization of footwear leather wastes in bubbling fluidized bed combustion

Transformation of hide (animal skins) into leather is a complicated process during which significant amounts of wastes are generated. Footwear is the sector that consumes the major part of leather (60%). Logically, this industry is producing the largest quantity of leather wastes. The objective of this work was to demonstrate the technical feasibility of fluidized bed technology to recover the energy from burning footwear leather wastes. Considering the characteristics of leather waste, especially the heating value (12.5–21 MJ/kg), it can be considered a fairly good fuel. Moreover, leather waste has suitable characteristics for combustion, e.g., high volatile matter (76.5%) and low ash content (5.2%). Two factors deserve special attention: N2O and NOx emissions as a consequence of its unusual high nitrogen content (14.1%) and the chromium speciation because chromium is the main element of ash (3.2%) due to its use in leather tanning. A series of experiments has been carried out in a 0.1 MWt bubbling fluidized bed pilot plant. The combustion efficiency, flue gas composition and chromium speciation were investigated. Despite having high nitrogen content, a low conversion rate of fuel-N to NOx and N2O was attained. Chromium was concentrated in the solid streams and it was consistently found as CrIII+; no presence of CrVI+ was detected.