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DEPUR PADANA ACQUE, wastewater treatment as corporate mission

DEPUR PADANA ACQUE, the certificate of incorporation, the origins, and its corporate mission. Over fifty years of experience in wastewater treatment. Hundreds of issues resolved with solutions frequently tailored according to the customer’s needs. Installation and management of numerous plants in different production and market sectors. The company operates in various industrial sectors: food and agriculture, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, printing, box manufacturing, paint factories, textiles, tanneries, plastics, and many others.

Symbiosis between the territory and the mission

We are talking about DEPUR PADANA ACQUE, a company with over one hundred employees where professionalism, experience, passion, and expertise masterfully blend thanks to the precise coordination of CEO Rodrigo Padoan and the founder Rossano Padoan. The “family-run business” does not end here, as during my company tour, I also met environmental engineer Marianna Padoan in the planning and design office. We focus our attention moreover on the laundries sector, divided in “laundry laboratories” and “industrial laundries”, different for their size, but different also for the type of service they offer.

Rossano Padoan, the founder of DEPUR PADANA ACQUE, has come a long way since he took his first steps in Milan in the early ’70s searching for work and entrepreneurial success. “I started,” he tells us, “by doing technical work, sales, marketing, and I always had to keep a watchful eye on the company’s accounts and finances.” Then, at the end of the ’70s, he returned home to Rovigo, where the company has its headquarters today.
A province crossed by the impressive waterways of the Adige and Po rivers, creating a natural habitat so distinctive that the entire delta area is famously referred to as the Italian Camargue. The company is located in the southern industrial area of the city. The central, crucial, and defining element of the territory is water. There is undoubtedly a symbiosis between the territory and the mission, the “raison d’être” (the reason of existence), and the essential nature of DEPUR PADANA ACQUE.

Biological wastewater purification plant ECOBLOCK® series equipped with
S.B.R. technology (Sequencing Batch Reactor) for treating effluent waters
resulted from industrial washing machines. Capacity 25 m3/day.

Installation at TRERЀ INNOVATION company – ASOLA (MN)

Water must be preserved

Water is a precious resource, it must be preserved, and DEPUR PADANA ACQUE knows how to do it. The headquarters spans an area of 20.000 square meters, of which over 6.000 are dedicated to production activities, and another 1.500 are divided among offices, an accredited analysis laboratory, and a development and research centre. Wastewater treatment is a field where everything needs to be explained in detail. We are talking about this with Giovanni Pio, the Technical/Sales Manager of the company, who is sharing us his knowledge on water purification systems and an in-depth analysis on the company’s potential.

“At DEPUR PADANA ACQUE, we offer a wide range of standardized wastewater plant solutions of different sizes, as well as solutions for laboratories and for large industrial laundries. For various reasons, however, we often need to customize our solutions according to the specific needs of each customer. For example, space is obviously an important resource in a company and often limited; but even in these cases, we can always find a solution, like using vertically-oriented plants. We design customized solutions. Our experience tells us that in most of the situations, we need to personalize our interventions. We are like tailors sewing a tailored suit. This has always been a hallmark of DEPUR PADANA ACQUE”.

We often face the need to customize or, rather, personalize our wastewater solutions

Intervention techniques

Which intervention techniques do you specifically use in laundries?
“The most suitable technology for treating these wastewaters is biological treatment, where water purification is carried out by specific aerobic bacteria, commonly known as “activated sludge”. These bacteria feed on pollutants, transforming them into simpler substances such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen gas, oxygen, etc. Consider that table linen used in the food service industry is contaminated with organic products, mostly food residues. Biological purification is the only method that can ensure an excellent final result for this type of wastewater, achieving treated water with characteristics suitable for discharge, usually in the public sewerage system, or, where the sewerage is not present, into surface waters. In both cases, the treated water must meet very high-quality standards. We provide plants that meet the requirements for both types of discharge”.

Which kind of technology is used for biological purification?

“The MBR biological purification is widely used – “MBR” coming from the English acronym Membrane BioReactor. Essentially, it is a purification system that integrates traditional activated sludge technology with that of ultrafiltration using special submerged membranes. This is to achieve the separation of the treated water from the “activated sludge”, replacing the normal secondary sedimentation tank. This method produces ultrafiltered treated water of the highest quality. With this technology, the treated water can be successfully recycled. The purified water can be partially reused, but with the help of some other technologies, water recovery can be pushed to very high percentages”.

"The MBR biological purification technology widely used – MBR stands for
Membrane BioReactor"

How was the wastewater purification carried out until a few years ago?
“The classical biological purification with activated sludge was always used, but today the added value is that MBR (Membrane BioReactor) plants are much more efficient, and, not least, they require less space. This is because the oxidation section, which has always had a significant volume, can be halved or even further reduced thanks to MBR technology. Another specific feature of this technology, which can also be integrated on existing plants, is exactly the significant reduction in the space requirements of the purification plant”.

Biological wastewater purification plant, ECOBLOCK® Series, mono-block
structure equipped with MBR technology.
Installation at LAVANDERIA SCOTLANDI – BOLOGNA

When installing a wastewater purification plant in a laundry, there are often issues related to the authorisations. Which is your operational practice for overcoming such problems?
“For starting-up such an installation the user must obtain a socalled “discharge authorisation” that is issued by the relevant authorities. Our task is to provide all the necessary documentation (project drawings, technical reports and specifications, etc.) that the customer must then use to complete the required documentation. Following the authorization and after the installation of the plant, the authorities or local Health Agencies (ATS) will carry out all water sampling to certify the conformity of the discharge. In many cases, the authorization includes the commitment of the client to make periodic chemical analyses of the treated waters by themselves, keeping an analytical history so that the agency can verify its conformity over time”.

Biological wastewater purification plant, equipped with MBR technology,
for the treatment and recycling of industrial wastewater resulted from wool
finishing and dyeing activities. Installation at LORO PIANA – QUARONA (VC)

Question and answer

But your role does not end just with the supply of the equipment, right?
“Exactly. In addition to supplying the equipment, we also ensure the scheduled maintenance. We have in-house technicians and a widely distributed external service network that carries out scheduled maintenance across the entire territory. These are annual contracts that renew over time, and some customers have been with us for over thirty years. As part of the scheduled maintenance, as DEPUR PADANA ACQUE, we carry out analytical control activities through our accredited in-house laboratory, that analyses all samples taken by our technicians at each stage of the process. Analytical activity is crucial, and only the transparency of the water is not enough to guarantee that it is free of impurities”.

Which are the personnel professional skills that you rely on, in your company?
“They are many and diverse skills. For design, we rely on a technical department with dedicated draftsmen, designers, and engineers who are managing the essential phases of the projects. We have chemists in the laboratory who are essential for the analytical phase. The workshop includes welders, painters, assemblers, workers with different specializations. A production process that makes use of a variety of skills. Currently, we outsource the heavy carpentry works and the production of electrical panels. Everything else is done by us.”

Which is the “great frontier”, the technology goal when it comes to wastewater treatments?
“In the specific laundry sector, the goal is to achieve total water reuse. We are in a context of dramatic climate change, and in certain cyclical phases there is also the problem of water scarcity. What is at stake is this. Water and energy, even for laundries, are and will always be crucial issues. The goal is to get to the point of proposing zero-discharge purification plants that allow laundries to reuse water on a “limited cycle”, which will significantly reduce costs. The challenge is this: we are already working on it and we have fitted solutions that allow for significant water recovery. The internal research and development of DEPUR PADANA ACQUE is strongly focused on achieving this goal. In our field, there is something new to learn and discover every day. Our strength comes from curiosity, and the founder of the company embodies the quintessence of this energy. Innovative solutions. This mentality has been spread throughout the company. All of this necessarily leads to gaining a competitive advantage. Technology is important, but it is essential to be combined with a reasonable cost of intervention”.

Biological wastewater purification plant with cyclic/sequencing operation (”SBR”),
capacity 60 cu.m./day. Wastewater treatment resulted from washing
and finishing of socks and technical sportswear.
Installation at SM3 d.o.o. – Tešanj (Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Regulations and awareness

Are there any European, national, or regional regulations that encourage the potential user to employ your technology and contribution regarding the water purification?
“Since 2018, even for the field of wastewater purification, it arrived a big contribution from 4.0 Industry by recovering a large part of the investment as tax credits. In the last five to six years, our production has substantially increased, also due to these incentives. We are currently waiting to see the provisions of 5.0 Industry, which is focused towards energy efficiency and sustainability. We hope that this legislation will also have the same driving effect as the previous one. Already with 4.0 industry we had to implement our plants in line with the specific requirements, in essence we will do the same thing also for 5.0 industry. A new path is underway. When it comes to local incentives, there are often regional concessions but also national regulations that push investment for macro areas such as for the South, always as a tax credit, a measure that means a significant boost to investment.”

Do you think that it has been made some progress in the recent years in terms of environmental awareness?
“In environmental terms, we are fortunate in Italy to have very advanced regulations at the European level. Legislative Decree No. 152 of 2006 regulates, among various environmental issues the wastewater discharge. The provision requires that companies which contaminate water during production processes and then have to return it to the environment must comply with very stringent parameters. However, I must say that today environmental awareness and sensitivity has objectively increased.

The willingness to invest, the driving force for business development, the support of various incentives and benefits, environmental awareness – the combination of all these factors that has represented, and represents for us as DEPUR PADANA ACQUE a real virtuous circle for all these years, and there are all the conditions for projecting it in the future as well,” concludes Giovanni Pio.

DEPUR PADANA ACQUE S.r.l

DEPUR PADANA ACQUE S.r.l
Viale Maestri del Lavoro, z.i. Borsea
45100 Rovigo RO – Italy
Phone +39 0425 472211
info@depurpadana.it www.depurpadana.com

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