Societal challenges are strongly pushing the tanning industry towards development of more sustainable technologies and products while maintaining a harmonious relationship between the economic, social and environmental domain. The objective of the present study has been to enhance the greenness of a well-established wet-white tannin class/group and thus reduce the environmental footprint of the tanning process. Therefore, newly Host-Guest supramolecular Syntans (HGS) based on commercial synthetic polymers and oligosaccharides from renewable plant matter have been synthesized. The formation of the inclusion complexes was characterized in aqueous solution using 1D NMR and ATR-FTIR experiments. The ability of HGS to crosslink collagen in the tanning process was studied both at laboratory and pilot scale. The efficiency of the newly synthesized products was demonstrated by micro-DSC , ATF-FTIR and solid-state NMR analyses. Our study showed that the selected supramolecular eco-friendly host, allows for a better penetration of the active/guest tannin into the leather structure, thus increasing the concentration of tannin-collagen interaction and the hydrothermal stability of leather. Furthermore, both physical and mechanical tests proved the high quality of the final product (crust leather) -(Patent)
New supramolecular eco-friendly syntans for a more sustainable and ethic tanning process
Ilaria Quaratesi;Carmine Gaeta;Placido Neri;Massimo Rinaldi;
2022-01-01
Abstract
Societal challenges are strongly pushing the tanning industry towards development of more sustainable technologies and products while maintaining a harmonious relationship between the economic, social and environmental domain. The objective of the present study has been to enhance the greenness of a well-established wet-white tannin class/group and thus reduce the environmental footprint of the tanning process. Therefore, newly Host-Guest supramolecular Syntans (HGS) based on commercial synthetic polymers and oligosaccharides from renewable plant matter have been synthesized. The formation of the inclusion complexes was characterized in aqueous solution using 1D NMR and ATR-FTIR experiments. The ability of HGS to crosslink collagen in the tanning process was studied both at laboratory and pilot scale. The efficiency of the newly synthesized products was demonstrated by micro-DSC , ATF-FTIR and solid-state NMR analyses. Our study showed that the selected supramolecular eco-friendly host, allows for a better penetration of the active/guest tannin into the leather structure, thus increasing the concentration of tannin-collagen interaction and the hydrothermal stability of leather. Furthermore, both physical and mechanical tests proved the high quality of the final product (crust leather) -(Patent)I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
