Evaluation of Potential Application for Sunt Pod Extracts (Acadia Nilotica) in Leather Tanning

Abstract

The current investigation was carried out to evaluate theefficiency of using sunt, Acacia nilotica, pods extract in leathertanning. Skins from 16 Barki rams aged 12-18 months werecured and prepared for tanning using sunt pod extract. Thesunt pods were collected and dried at 25 °C for 5 days.Thereafter, the dried pods were ground by a 0.3 mm finenessgrinder and were further subjected to the extraction procedure.Three chemical additives, namely NaOH, Na2SO3 and Na2CO3were used for the extraction at 70 and 90oC. The influences ofboth types of chemical additive and extraction temperature onextraction yield were determined. The extract characteristicsin terms of stiasny number, hide powder, tannins, non-tanninsand total phenol contents were also analyzed. The resultsshowed that increasing extraction temperature increased(P<0.05) extraction yield and improved the quality of theextract regardless of chemical additive type. Meanwhile, theextraction using either Na2SO3 in aqueous solution or by waterat 90°C yielded the best extract characteristics. The elevatedconcentrations of condensed and hydrolysable tanninsobtained in our results point to the possibility of utilizing suntpod extract in tanning or re-tanning of leather rather thanusing traditional tanning reagents.