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. Tara tannins have been used in retanning formulas in leather processing and its properties are well known. This work aims to optimize formulations using tara as a pre-tanning agent. Combinations with a naphthalene sulphonic syntan are used to obtain an innovative wet-white recipe in which shrinkage temperature, tensile strength, tensile elongation, tear load and lightfastness properties are considered as statistical variables