Tara (Caesalpinia spinosa): The sustainable source of tannins for innovative tanning processes

Abstract

This study considers the fruit of the tara tree as a sustainable source for tanning agents and proposes alternatives to the commercial mineral salts and vegetable extracts to comply with environment and social concerns. Although tara tannins have been used in the leather industry and its properties are well known, the work aims to optimize formulations using tara as a pretanning agent. Combinations with a naphthalene sulphonic syntan are used to obtain an innovative wet-white recipe considering shrinking temperature, tensile strength, tensile elongation, tear load and lightfastness properties as statistical variables.