The artisan production of canned tuna is characterized by generating effluents with high organic and saline loads, which complicates their suitable treatment. The main objective of the LIFE VERTALIM project is to demonstrate the efficiency of a holistic solution (including technical, legislative, social, and environmental aspects) for the controlled integration of food industry wastewater from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the urban sanitation system with the compliance of all stakeholders. This work shows the viability of the implementation of low-cost innovative solutions, through the clean and eco-efficient production and wastewater pretreatment for fish canneries. This solution allows on average a reduction of 30% of the wastewater discharges to the environment and a reduction of food losses of up to 0.1%. Moreover, there is a reduction of between 40% and 90% related to high organic load. These results allow the canneries to dispose their pretreated effluents to the urban sanitation system, avoiding the high costs of an industrial wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) to discharge to the river. A better physical-chemical quality in the river waters as a well as the marine water surrounding the urban WWTP have been achieved.

The main objective of the LIFE VERTALIM project is to demonstrate the efficiency of a holistic solution (including technical, legislative, social and environmental aspects) for the controlled integration of food industry wastewater in urban sanitation system with the compliance of all stakeholders. The artisan production of canned tuna is characterized by generating effluents with high organic and saline loads, which complicates their suitable treatment. This work shows two approaches to solve this problem. To begin, low-cost innovative solutions, through clean and eco-efficient production and wastewater pretreatment for the fish canneries. Then, the implementation of a real time control system (RTC) as a remote management system in the sanitation network that will allow the remote management of the urban and industrial discharges, based on the modeling of the collector network and WWTP in different scenarios.