High bloom gelatin strength from white leather shavings

Leather making process is recognized as one of the highly polluting extensive industries which generate huge amounts of solids and liquid tannery wastes. These wastes effect in severely way on the surrounding environment and human health if these polluting not well treated. The aim of this article is to obtain high bloom gelatin from white leather shavings (untanned hide shavings, WLS) via alkaline hydrolysis for improved utilization of leather waste. This research introduces a system of reusing technologies for WLS wastes including preparing gelatin, isolating collagen protein by extracting method then characterization of extracted gelatin. This article recognized to determine efficiency of the thermal and chemical treatments on the white leather waste in recovering the largest amount of gelatin with high bloom strength and a smallest amount of residue. Chemical treatments of white solid wastes by partial hydrolysis of wastes using different factors affecting on hydrolysis such as alkalis concentration, temperature and contact time were discussed. The method verified that the leather wastes can be successfully processed to the powder like leather gelatin products. It was found that the optimum conditions to obtain high bloom gelatin strength from white shaving leather wastes around 150 bloom are 4 % w/v NaOH, 4 hours contact time, 250 rpm at 50 °C.