Abstract

Despite their importance, optimization methods have seldom been used in a routine basis in the leather industry. However, their employment can yield an important economic saving since any method of optimization would enable us to obtain maximum information with the minimum number of experiments and to determine the significance of the different variables and their inter-dependence. The effect of three masking (complexing) agents: sodium oxalate, sodium citrate and sodium orthophtalate on 33% basic chromium salt (conventional tanning agent) was studied. The optimum concentrations of each of these masking agents, their synergistic effect and the corresponding shrinkage temperature and exhaustion of the tanning liquors were determined.