Utilization Possibilities of Timber Wastes in Leather Manufacturing

In timber production, only the 24% of trees could be turned into timber and used as an end product, while the rest becomes the waste of forest goods. Although it is known that the wastes of timbers are utilized in different fields such as energy and composites production in general, their use in the leather industry as a tanning material is seemed to be a new concept. For this purpose, the usage possibilities of the timber wastes of red and black pine in the form of sawdust and bark were aimed to investigate for the leather manufacturing. The red and black pine wastes were extracted at Koch extractor at 90°C for 8 h and the tannin contents, influences on the shrinkage temperature, filling properties and final physical characteristics of the leathers such as tensile strength, elongation at break, tear strength and color measurements were investigated. The results revealed that the red pine barks (Pinus resinosa L.) could be an alternative source of vegetable tannins compared to other timber wastes for the leather industry due to the better extraction yield and tannin content. Besides similar results in terms of tanning properties were obtained with the commonly used vegetable tannins such as valonea and mimosa.