Technologies of winery wastewater treatment: a critical approach

The production of wine is one of the important agricultural fields in Southern European countries and its importance to other parts of the world (e.g. Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, India, South Africa, and USA) is increasing and impacting on their economies. A high volume of winery effluents is produced everyday. Although the need for efficient treatment of winery wastewaters is important, using different technologies, other crucial factors also need to be taken into consideration—such as the geographic location of each country, etc. This review paper indicates that the composition of winery effluents located in many countries of world is different and the climate strongly influences the appropriate technology to be selected for wastewater treatment. Furthermore, the technologies used for winery wastewater treatment are investigated and briefly analyzed. The major concluding remark of this review is that: (i) the selection of the most appropriate treatment technology is based on the location of each industry (country); (ii) some future applied technologies (adsorption) enhance the possibility of selectively reusing some highly added value compounds (i.e. resveratrol) existed in winery wastewaters.