O cromo no meio ambiente e tratamentos de efluentes contaminados com metais pesados

Abstract

Industrial growth coupled with excessive consumerism leads to an increase in waste contaminated with heavy metals, which can cause serious damage to health and the environment when discarded outside the limits established by legislation. Among these heavy metals, chromium stands out because it is widely used in the leather processing and has well-known harmful effects when improperly disposed in the environment, once it is a metal with a high degree of toxicity, high persistence in the environment and not biodegradable. For this reason, compliance with legislation has also been a major challenge for industries, since the parameters for the release of treated water into rivers, lakes and oceans are increasingly restrictive, which encourages the practice of techniques for recovery and reuse of the inputs used in the industrial processes. Therefore, considering the importance of this subject and its insertion in the current context of clean and sustainable technologies, this work aims to study the multiple forms that chromium is found in the environment and present the possible treatments for effluents contained in its composition heavy metals.