TARA (Caesalpinia spinosa)the sustainable source of tannins for innovative tanning processes

Resum

This thesis considers the fruit of the tara tree (Caesalpinia spinosa) as a sustainable source for tanning agents and proposes alternatives to the commercial mineral salts and vegetable extracts to comply with an increasing demand that concerns lower carbon footprint and health safety. Taxonomy of the tree is described and the substances contained in the fruit are chemically characterized in order to justify that tara farm forestry is economically viable and to secure a potential worth. The value chain is fully described from fruit collection in remote Andean regions to the export for the most important leather markets. Although tara tannins have been used in the leather industry and its properties being well known, the experimental part of the work aims to optimize innovative formulations using tara as wet-white pre-tanning agent. Combinations with a selected syntan used for wet white and final article recipes are proposed