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The treatment of winery wastewater can realised using several biological processes based both on aerobic or anaerobic systems using suspended biomass or biofilms. Several systems are currently offered by technology providers and current research envisages the availability of new promising technologies for winery wastewater treatment. The present paper intends to present a brief state of the art of the existing status and advances in biological treatment of winery wastewater in the last decade, considering both lab, pilot and full-scale studies. Advantages, drawbacks, applied organic loads, removal efficiency and emerging aspects of the main biological treatments were considered and compared. Nevertheless in most treatments the COD removal efficiency was around 90–95% (remaining COD is due to the un-biodegradable soluble fraction), the applied organic loads are very different depending on the applied technology, varying for an order of magnitude. Applied organic loads are higher in biofilm systems than in suspended biomass while anaerobic biofilm processes have the smaller footprint but in general a higher level of complexity.

A 6-month study was carried out at AMGA's research centre, using a microfiltration pilot plant to treat lake water from the Brugneto dam. Specific tests were carried out to challenge the membrane with respect to its ability to remove high levels of turbidity, E. coli , micro-algae, aluminium and Cryptosporidium oocysts. The microfiltration membrane used in this study was clearly fully able to reject protozoan oocysts at a level not easily obtainable using conventional treatment technologies, as well as faecal indicator bacteria.